


Ferelden Brown

by covertCalligrapher



Series: Cherry Wine [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cullen's POV, F/M, Slow Burn Romance, hey-yo a prequel, i really needed to write this and it's honestly gonna be so fun and we're just jumping right in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-03-29 14:09:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3899212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/covertCalligrapher/pseuds/covertCalligrapher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time he had seen her was in the War Room at Haven, the air tight as she sensed him there. She <i>felt</i> like magic, the air thick with it all. She was beautiful and he had been taken in by it, his throat closing for want of a way to say it to her. That was perhaps the best thing to have happened to him right then; she was bitter and mean and <i>afraid</i>, but he couldn't be upset with her. Her life was written in her face and even as she snapped at him he couldn't help but be gentle with her.</p><p>(A small prequel to Winter's Grasp, written in Cullen's POV. Definitely not necessary to have read Winter's Grasp first.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Herald of Andraste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He stood there looking at her, mind reeling and tongue too thick to figure out something to say back. He _wanted_ to shoot something back but his mind failed him and he just watched her look from where her boot had become covered in snow up to his face where her frown deepened into a sneer. There was no denying she was _pretty_ , perhaps even beautiful, but right then? She looked like a woman with a list of abuses and too many grudges to pick away at until they bled, spiteful and _angry_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this will be a small fic detailing Haven from Cullen's POV. I really needed to write this because I feel like I really had nailed down what happens when in his relationship with her and had a very clear picture of what happened in Haven before he pulled her out of the snow. Honestly, I always felt like he fell hard for the Inquisitor before she fell for him, so here it is!

The air here was better than in Kirkwall. It didn’t itch or have that tightness and he couldn’t _hear_ the red lyrium no one had known was growing in the ground. The walls didn’t sing at Haven and it was wonderfully silent, winter stillness combined with the sense that he was making a difference and not just banging his head against the same burning city having his conscious lighter.

The nights might have been painful and his joints ached and the water might not have been _blue_ enough, but it was good.

Still though, it wasn’t perfect; not that he knew what  _perfect_ was even supposed to be. As a child he had figured it was what his parents had, a family and workable land and that litter of cats that lived under their house. Then he’d grown up a bit and he’d _known_ perfect was that shining plate and mail and serving the Maker. After that, though, he didn’t have much. He’d put down his Sword of Mercy and taken up something more abstract but it felt like it meant more. It was better than protecting something that had ruined his life so many times. It was about making a _difference,_ not about whether or not it was perfect.

Cullen had been staring at the map in front of himself almost blindly, mind slugging through the dull pounding at the base of his skull. It was like rocks grinding together and beating against his brain. It was unpleasant and it was still difficult to think through, but it could have been worse. That fact kept him from complaining, even to himself.

The door to the room opened suddenly and she was standing there, all red hair and eyes that weren’t _so_ blue when he blinked his eyes to clear his mind. In the warm shadows cast by the flickering candles, he _almost_ couldn’t see that scar over her eye or the way she was scowling. The Herald stopped and blinked at him for a moment before her lips mashed together and she looked down at the table, one of her hands covering part of her face.

“I didn’t realize you were still in here,” she ground out, slumping slightly against the doorframe.

“I was just looking at… possible scouting opportunities for the Inquisition,” he said, glad he had managed to think of something to tell her. “Were you looking for something?”

Her eyes darted from the table up to him, her hand coming down to grip at the collar of her coat. “I need my gloves,” she said shortly, taking a deep breath. She walked stiffly into the room, the air getting that tight familiarity as she approached the table. Her left hand, the one with the Mark on it crossing long and jagged, reached out and snatched the small pair of doeskin gloves that he hadn’t noticed had been there. She turned immediately and went right for the door, the air tightening even further as the magic around her pulled in closer, wound itself around her body.

“Wait!” Cullen called after her and she froze in the doorway, body stiff.

“Is there something you need _Commander?_ ” she sneered, voice suddenly so hard. She didn’t bother to look over her shoulder at him and his chest felt a strange kind of clenching at her reacting so harshly.

“I just thought that we should speak more,” he said simply, mind scrambling for _something_ to talk about.

“That won’t be necessary,” she said blankly, words chased by a certain coldness he would come to associate nearly everything she did with. She walked out then, the door shutting loudly behind her. The hinges screamed and the echoes of the door slam bounced around the small room, his headache building and starting to pound in time with them.

* * *

 

The next day brought cold light and a slight reprieve for the headache that had been pounding inside his skull for the past few days. The air smelled fresher and he was happy to be outside and feel the coldness of the mountain winds rush over his face. Bad memories were buried everywhere he went but he would be lying if he said he hadn’t missed Ferelden. There was something about breathing the same air he had as a child that had his joints aching less.

The Herald came stomping over, looking angry to even have to be walking in his direction. Her hair was pulled back tightly and she looked like she hadn’t slept, her skin pale under the freckles and cheeks red from the cold. A few feet in front of him, she stopped and stared for a moment before pressing her fingers to her scar and looking at the soldiers sparring.

He cleared his throat. “Herald,” he said slowly.

She turned to look at him, mouth mashed into a line again. “Commander.”

“Is there something you wished to discuss?” Judging by how abruptly she had left the other day and shot him angry glares over dinner, chances were that she was being forced to speak with him

Her eyes flicked over to Cassandra and back and right there he had his answer. “I figured I should know more about you,” she said dully, as if reading off a report.

 _You don’t have to if you don’t want to_. He wanted to say it, but truth be told, perhaps if he could _speak_ with her a bit she’d find she had nothing to fear from him. It would make working together extraordinarily easier. “Anything in particular?”

“How do you feel about mages?” she asked after a moment’s consideration. Her eyes had turned wicked and her hand had gone to grip at her scarf, knuckles white with the force of it. The set of her body said she felt she already knew the answer but was willing to endure whatever he said because she would always be _right_.

For a brief moment she reminded him of Hawke, but then again, he hadn’t seen the Champion in years.

“I have treated mages with suspicion and mistrust in my past,” he said slowly, mind fighting to stay at Haven when all those old memories clutched at him like meathooks. “It was unworthy of me.”

She considered him for another moment. “You were the Knight-Commander of Kirkwall, yes?”

“Knight- _Captain_. And I’m not a Templar any longer.” The words felt tired and over-said. It felt like it was in vain to keep denying it when all he was ever addressed as was his old title. Even worse so, Knight-Commander was one he had never even  _held_.

“You were the Knight- _Captain,_ then,” she said impatiently. Her heel dug even more into the snow as she tilted her head, pretty face scrunching with malice.

“For ten years,” he said cautiously. The hand he had holding the pommel of his sword gripped more tightly, readying himself for what she would say. He hadn’t spoken to her much but he already could tell it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

“Varric speaks relatively highly of you,” she said and it certainly wasn’t the answer he expected.

“Excuse me?”

“He says that you were apparently very good at not paying attention to what was happening in the city,” she continued. “And that you never did manage to catch Hawke. Not that you really _wanted_ to, from my understanding.”

He stood there looking at her, mind reeling and tongue too thick to figure out something to say back. He _wanted_ to shoot something back but his mind failed him and he just watched her look from where her boot had become covered in snow up to his face where her frown deepened into a sneer. There was no denying she was _pretty_ , perhaps even beautiful, but right then? She looked like a woman with a list of abuses and too many grudges to pick away at until they bled, spiteful and _angry_.

Her eyes darted to the hand he had on his sword and she scoffed, head turning to look out over the frozen lake. “Nothing to say?” she muttered before walking past him, her hand gripping at her scarf again as he was left to stand there in blunt shock. As she brushed past he felt that familiar tightness in the air, ten years of knowing that it screamed _fear!_ from those Circles he had been crammed into burning brightly in his head.

There was no denying her rudeness or her seemingly limitless ability to appear detached, but he couldn’t bring himself to be actually _angry_ at her. She was a Circle mage and there was still old shame right next to the lyrium in his bones for how he had been, how he didn’t want to _be_ anymore. Perhaps the Herald of Andraste being a mage was the kind of symbol that needed to happen. For her to be Clara Trevelyan felt like it was meant more for him personally, someone to sneer at him and say all those things he had always secretly thought about himself that others were unwilling to voice.

He spoke quickly with Cassandra before dinner that night, the Seeker’s face darkening as he spoke of his encounter with the Herald.

“She was asking me incessantly if you really had to be here,” she said as she crossed her arms in front of herself. He could see a bit of sweat still on her face and the dummy behind her was hacked thoroughly. “I told her to speak with you and see that she shouldn’t have any reservations.”

 _She is clearly afraid_. “I don’t think she actually intended to _talk_ , Cassandra.”

She sighed. “I know. I suspected as much when she walked away from me after I told her to see you. She should not be acting like this, though, there is no excuse. She’s a grown woman.”

“Are you going to say anything to her about it?” he asked, cold regret at having spoken with Cassandra suddenly gripping his gut.

“Of course,” she replied effortlessly, arms coming down to her sides.

“Maker, just don’t…” he said, a hand hovering in the air as he tried to find a way to word it. _Scare her? No, no, just don’t make it worse. Don’t let her think I don’t have stones, she’ll probably just act_ worse.

Her hand came out and rested on his shoulder. The sudden, gripping wish to actually be able to feel it through his mantle and layers of mail overcame him, but he pushed it away. “I understand. I will indicate that she need not be so afraid here. Also, we’re leaving tomorrow morning for the Hinterlands and that should afford her more than enough time to realize that antagonizing her advisers is not the best choice.”

He let out a short chuckle. Cassandra’s words were always so reassuring, the feeling welcome. “Make sure that she doesn’t do anything rash. She might accidentally offend a displaced lord and the Inquisition will be over before it has started.”

Cass smiled at him and she squeezed the fur on his mantle before letting go. “She should be able to handle _that_ much.”

The Seeker walked off and he was left standing there, mind contemplating what the Herald had said to him earlier. It didn’t sting as much as it had before and the memory of it left until he tried to sleep, his shortcomings swallowing his dreams whole until he awoke, achy and even more tired than when he had lied down. His joints felt like they were grinding together and he groaned at the weight of his plate, his spine protesting as he strapped himself in. Blessedly though, a headache didn’t start. Today wasn’t going to be bad.

He oversaw the soldiers who were to leave with the Herald, mind focused as he read the list of relief workers who were to depart. He hardly noticed when Clara had come to stand near him, slightly closer than the day before when she had sneered at him in the snow. The air felt tighter as she breathed in, his skin prickling at the feeling of her magic right there under her skin, the old ache of lyrium in his bones recognizing her.

“What I did yesterday was uncalled for,” she managed, voice thin as she rubbed her scar. She was looking pointedly at a rock she must have found fascinating, but her eyes flicked to his just for a moment when he said he accepted, her frost-bitten cheeks reddening even further as the air loosened just a little. Her face sang out embarrassment and he could see Cassandra watching out of the corner of his eye. It was clearly her work but it helped him, and the slight sincerity in the Herald’s voice said that either Cassandra had shamed her so greatly that she regretted acting that way or she genuinely felt bad about it. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

It didn’t really matter _what_ it was, though. It helped and he felt something like a small pang of fear at having to watch the Herald ride out. Whether it was fear for her or for what she might do outside of Haven, he wasn’t quite sure. Honestly, he felt the strange urge to really _talk_ with her, but she was going to be gone for three weeks. It could wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter is where he starts getting it, trust me. I have it all written out again.


	2. Two Sides of One Coin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She froze and he felt the air tighten again, so inexplicably thick he felt like he couldn’t breathe for a moment as he brought his hand back, a few inches off from touching the fabric of her coat. “Is there something you need?” she asked, voice thick as she looked at him over her shoulder. The scar over her left eye cut darkly down her cheek and he was suddenly painfully aware of where his hands were. He grabbed his sword grip with both hands, trying to will the sudden tremors away.

Letters came back with the reports from the Hinterlands on the Inquisition’s progress, as well as new agents. The reports were all about the people in the rolling hills and their growing acceptance of the Inquisition. Mother Giselle had been located and recruited. A circle mage and a new scout arrived, both speaking of the Herald as if she weren’t the same woman who wound the Veil tightly around her hands and glared at him across the compound. Maybe she saved her angry looks and judgement for him; the reports stated that she was growing to be liked, for her actions if not for her words.

The letters, though, said something different. They were short and to the point, written in Cassandra’s long bold hand. The Herald spent her nights alone on the edges of whatever camp they had settled in and she didn’t really appear to eat anything. Cassandra had taken it upon herself to force her to eat something and it made her slightly more agreeable during the day. One night she had stalked away in a fit of rage after being unable to start up a cookfire and no one had seen her until she returned the next morning, a portion of the surrounding forest frozen solid. All companions present declined to comment save Solas, who seemed to be the only one she didn’t immediately snap at when spoken to. He seemed to be able to shame her easily and she was more accepting when so many pressed her for help.

It was alright by all accounts, save for the clusters of Templars they encountered. Cassandra noted the way the Herald’s hands shook as she drove her staff into the still body of the one that had Silenced her. The Seeker declined writing anything about what she had said about Templars for near hours afterward, but Cullen wasn’t so dim that he couldn’t fill it in himself.

Aside from her dwindling attitude and her resistance to being dragged around to seal rifts and inspire others, she actually did _good_ in those rolling hills. She took up hunting rams and marking caches of goods for refugees, even going so far as to stalk around the brambles of the area for crystal grace an alchemist asked for to heal those who were wounded. It was strange to read about her like that, as the woman who scoured the hills to fix anything she could touch when everything she said shivered more than the air in a blizzard. Actions spoke louder than words and both were equally deafening for her.

A little more than a week after the letters arrived, a mob was in its beginnings on the doorstep of the Chantry. Their shouts rattled around in his skull, banging against the throbbing that had started at the top of his neck. Walking outside to put it to rest, he didn’t even _need_ to look to know how it had started. The tightness in the air was nearly suffocating and the lyrium that still stuck hard in his joints ached at being so close to Templars, especially ones he could feel had just taken their drinks for the day.

They called him _Knight-Commander_ and he snapped at them over it, anger at the disregard flashing brightly for a moment until he heard the party walking up towards the Chantry, clearly wondering what all the screaming had been about. The anger dwindled quickly as the crowd dispersed and then _she_ was there, frowning at him and clutching at the scarf around her. Impossibly, she didn’t look as angry as she had before at him being there. It was a nice change of pace and the display of small acceptance made his headache more bearable.

They were all brought inside to speak with Mother Giselle and discuss the best course of action. Val Royeaux was next on the agenda, the Inquisition having acquired enough influence that perhaps the Herald wouldn’t be incarcerated on sight. As they decided courses to take, Clara hardly looked up at him over the table. He felt acutely aware of her presence, more aware of her than he felt he should have been. He’d been around _mages_ before, he had gotten so used to that way they felt. It made his back ache even more to think that perhaps it was more _her_ than her magic. Reading those reports of her and hearing the stories that had slowly started to trickle around, he felt his gut fluttering strangely when he thought of her. He could remember that genuine hint in her eyes when she apologized before she had left and the tightness in the air whenever she had spoken to him. If that hadn’t been there, if he couldn’t _feel_ her fear, would he want to know more about her?

Even so, he pressed the feeling down. It was too confusing and perhaps it was just fatigue. She snapped angrily at him when he so much as looked at her, he shouldn’t _want_ to feel anything for her in the slightest.

Still, though, it didn’t stop it from happening.

The trip was cleared for two days later, the council breaking so that arrangements could be made. Nearly everyone left first, the Herald following closely behind. He wanted to get closer and speak with her, perhaps ask her about the Circle? _No, that’s a terrible idea. Perhaps ask how her trip went? That seems reasonable enough--_

“I never expected to see you bullying other Templars, Commander,” she said coolly as they filed out of the room.

He jumped at the suddenness of her voice, startled out of his thoughts as he peered at her through the dim lights in the Chantry. “I’m sorry?” he asked, half unsure of what she had just said.

She looked down at her hands and grimaced, one long finger scratching under the bandage around her right hand. “Nothing,” she said shortly. She turned to stride away and he brought a hand up to stop her so he could just _speak,_ try to put this senseless bitterness to rest.

She froze and he felt the air tighten again, so inexplicably thick he felt like he couldn’t breathe for a moment as he brought his hand back, a few inches off from touching the fabric of her coat. “Is there something you need?” she asked, voice thick as she looked at him over her shoulder. The scar over her left eye cut darkly down her cheek and he was suddenly painfully aware of where his hands were. He grabbed his sword grip with both hands, trying to will the sudden tremors away.

The base of his skull pounded in time with his heart but he bit through it. “I wanted to discuss how your trip to the Hinterlands went.”

Her right hand clenched into a fist, bandage pulling taut as her knuckles paled under the stress. “I’m sure you can just read your reports.”

“I would _prefer_ to speak with you.”

“Why?” she snapped, turning to face him. Her feet started shuffling backwards a bit as the air pulled even closer towards her.

He stood up straighter and cleared his throat, noting the way she took just the smallest step away. “We are equals and should be able to speak freely around each other.”

She sighed and looked at the ground for a moment her hand rubbing at her scar again. Looking up at him, she was frowning again but it didn’t seem as angry as it had been before. “What do you want to know?” she asked quietly, eyes flicking anywhere but his face.

“Okay then,” he started, suddenly painfully unsure of what to ask. He settled for something simple. “What happened to your hand?”

The hand in question had been gripping her scarf but she relaxed it immediately once he asked about it. “Templar hunter,” she said, words chased with old venom.

 _This is going_ so _well_ , he thought to himself as he brought a hand to rub over the back of his neck. “Does it hurt?”

“No, I keep the bandage on for fun.”

“Very funny,” he said with a chuckle, trying so _hard_ to set her at ease. She rolled her eyes but the air loosened slightly. “The reports indicated that you aided many of the displaced refugees.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” she muttered, shrugging. Her hands came down from where they were fidgeting and clasped in front of herself.

“It’s good that you did, though; many people need to know that they can trust the Inquisition and that the Herald of Andraste is cooperating completely to fix this whole mess.” He blinked down at her and he _felt_ like smiling, but her feet were still set as if she could sprint off at any moment. Showing any teeth to her was likely to send her running like a rabbit with another sharp quip about his _lack of ability_.

“The Herald of Andraste,” she laughed and it sounded so _bitter_. “This really is a mess, isn’t it?”

He looked at her for a moment and her eyes were startlingly blue. Those long fingers came up and pressed hard into her scar, nails turning white with the force behind it. Briefly, he wondered if the action was out of pain or comfort, but the thought quickly flitted away as his headache pulsed again. “Is there something on your mind?” he asked in genuine concern.

“Actually, _yes_ ,” she said quickly and she looked right on the cusp of saying something horrible or throwing a fit or maybe she was readying herself to try to freeze him to the floor. Whether she didn’t out of sheer self-restraint or if it was tinged with fear, he’d never know.

She turned away, the smell of wood smoke and travel breezing out of her coat. “I’m going to go speak with Solas,” she said, strides a step down from running.

 _Don’t follow me_ , he thought as she heaved the door to the Chantry open and then closed it behind her. _Understood_.

* * *

 

The next day was met with a light flurry of snow in the air and a reprieve from both the ache in his joints and the ache in his head. The nightmares still screamed in his sleep, but he was getting used to them. When he was awake, they weren’t as large as they were when his eyes were closed. At night he could still hear the soft scraping and wet sounds of the Circle of Ferelden breaking. Eyes open, they were just whispers at the back of his mind, held off by the press of work and the want to not have to _listen_.

He drilled the recruits until noon broke and they fractured to either eat or continue on with their other duties. The Herald wandered past as the soldiers milled around, each staring once she had passed. She was speaking with the mercenary emissary that had arrived the other day. She actually managed to smile at him and nodded, watching as he walked away towards the stables. When she turned and saw the Commander watching her, her face fell into a frown and she stalked forward angrily.

He braced himself to speak with her, but was met with a wicked look that he decided right there he didn’t like on her face.

“How are you, Commander?” she asked amicably.

He glanced around for a moment for Cassandra, absolutely sure that she was watching to see if the Herald was making an effort to like him more. “I am well,” he said slowly once Cassandra was nowhere to be found.

“I was thinking that perhaps we could speak more,” she said. His skin itched at her tone, the air taut around him as she stood perhaps six feet away: too far to be comfortable.

“Is there anything you… wished to know?” He swallowed and straightened up, a hand scratching at the beard his hands had been too shaky to shave this morning.

She asked about the _Templars_ of all things. Out of everything he had expected her to ask, anything about the Order was perhaps the least. The part of him that thrived on rationality said that she was leading to something, she was too smart to just ask about something that seemed to affect her so deeply.

But there was also the part of him that craved to speak with her and his past before Kinloch Hold was easy to talk about.

He told her of the vigils and his education and she seemed genuinely interested. Or she was wonderful at feigning interest, honestly it was hard for him to tell with her. She seemed to be able to juggle her faces so well he had a hard time getting a read on her. She asked all the right questions, poked the right places to get him to speak more freely.

Of course, he saw he was pushed right where she wanted him as he started talking about his actual vows. She got straight to the point, her questioning invasive and borderline rude as she asked him whether or not he had taken such vows and _then some_. Something about her tone had him blushing furiously as he turned away, embarrassment for having _her_ ask it flaring hotly over his skin. He could feel her lean closer as he looked away and rubbed at the back of his neck, could practically taste the thinly veiled disdain she held for him in the air between them.

She left when he turned away completely, the noise she made caught between disgust and amusement. He waited until he couldn’t hear her boots crunching in the snow anymore and thanked the Maker that most of the recruits hadn’t been present to witness it. He shook the thought of her out of his head, his hands itching to hit something with his sword to get the feeling of her words out of his ears. She _couldn’t_ have been the woman who had crawled through the Hinterlands feeding refugees and then come back only to antagonize him.

The sick part of it though was that he couldn’t put down that desire to get her to speak with him on humane terms. The air felt like fear whenever she was around and he wanted to just get it to loosen. Maybe easing her fear of him would help with those years he’d left in the Circles, one person to put at ease to start making up for almost ten years of mistrust.

The prospect of speaking with her again already had him dreading seeing her at dinner that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay now that that's done I really can't wait to write the rest!


	3. Uncomfortable Hands and Tight Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The report stayed untouched on his desk. He would come back to it every night, curiosity burning in his fingertips, but he held it back. As much as he wanted to know what had made her that way, he held respect for her privacy. There was the desire to be _told_ instead of just finding it out. Templars read into things, invaded their charges privacy. But she wasn't his charge and he wasn't a Templar, and gaining her trust was as good a place as any to start. Had she been someone else, he probably would’ve just read the damned thing. As Leliana had put it, _Know the enemy_.

Mother Giselle started to lead the compound by way of service every morning. She was kind with a thick voice and Cullen found his headaches weren’t as horrible when she started the Canticle and lit the incense burners. After service ended the day the Herald left, he got off his knees and straightened his back, groaning slightly as he felt his spine crack. Cassandra put a hand on his arm and shared a look with him, her strong eyes encouraging. Both saw the Herald slink out of the Chantry as soon as she was released and Cassandra squeezed his arm before she followed.

The Herald and her party departed early that morning after she had embarrassed him in the snow. It squeezed his heart in a strange way to see her go after watching her drink an entire bottle of wine for dinner. She hadn’t so much as looked at him that night as she sat off to the side, only glancing up when Cassandra placed a small sandwich in front of her. He couldn’t help but notice the way it went uneaten as the bottle next to her drained slowly throughout dinner. He wished he had the stones to go up and talk to her, perhaps the wine had loosened her up enough that she would listen without remembering to be afraid.

As the night had dwindled down, he had wanted to ask her if she needed help getting to her room, but knew she would decline on principle if it had been him. He asked Varric to do him the favor instead and watched as she shoved the dwarf away before stumbling forward and allowing him to help support her.

It set his gut clenching to look at her: _this_ was the greatest hope Thedas had right now. She was a miserable person who seemed to enjoy nothing more than seeing how far she could pull on someone until they fell over. And _Maker_ was it difficult to listen to others talk of her.

Leliana watched them ride off with him, Josephine going back inside the Chantry to escape the cold as soon as they had crested that first hill. He couldn’t really blame her; it was hard to handle southern cold, especially since she hailed from somewhere as warm as Antiva.

“It is good that the Herald is finally departing,” Leliana said, voice low.

Cullen looked sideways at her. “You don’t like her?”

“You don’t have to be so polite, Commander,“ she said, a laugh bubbling up. She was still looking out over the snow covered hills, the sounds of the compound subdued in the light flurry. Her eyes were far away as she stared out, the sun still streaking pink as it rose in the sky. “You know better than to ask me that.”

“She could be worse,” he murmured, his eyes following where she was staring. For a brief moment, he wondered what she was seeing.

“She could be better as well,” she said. With a sigh, she looked away from the mountains and up at Cullen, washy blue eyes mischievous.

“You look about ready to say something, Leliana.” He straightened his back and rolled his neck, willing the aches to go away.

She cracked a smirk at him. “I understand you haven’t been getting along with her.”

“ _I_ understand that no one seems to get along with her.”

“I noticed that as well and had my people look into it.” Those eyes flashed again and his gut tightened. He wasn’t _afraid_ of Leliana, per se, but her methods were often too unsavory for him to stomach. “I learned some interesting things. Care for her _dossier_?”

“Is there anything that I should know about her?” he asked, unease pulling through his limbs. He felt his head throb slightly at the sensation and took a deep breath, trying to clear it all away.

“Considering she seems to be cooperating?” she replied with a shrug. “Then, no. There’s hardly anything recent anyway, but know the enemy, yes?”

She turned to leave, her words hanging heavily in the air behind her. Cullen cleared his throat, hand holding tightly onto the pommel of his sword. He could feel the leather of his gloves creaking with the force of it but didn’t loosen up. She stopped walking and looked at him, face sharp and turned as she stared.

“She isn’t the enemy, she’s the _Herald_ ,” he said with perhaps more force than was necessary.

Her eyes narrowed as another smirk split her face. “It’s a figure of speech, Commander.”

“Even so, Sister.”

“You know,” she started, turning to face him fully. “You’re being very kind to her considering she hasn’t made any efforts to return it.”

He shrugged slightly, snippets of those reports of what the Herald had done in the Hinterlands floating around his head. “I don’t take what she says to heart.” _We’ve all said things we regret._

“She doesn’t seem like someone who would waste words.” She crossed her arms over her chest and he caught himself wondering who she had been ten years before, dangerous and bright at the Orlesian court.

“Even so,” he said again, the words stronger this time. He cleared his throat and straightened again, eyes leveling with her. They were _equals_ and could speak as such. “I heard a few runners discussing your decision to spare a man who defected,” he said after a moment.

Her eyes narrowed and her stance tightened, the heavy shadow of her hood making her eyes flash more than they should’ve. “Yes, the… Herald suggested forcing him to serve would be preferable to killing him.”

“That sounds very unlike you.” _As I’ve come to know it, it’s unlike the_ both _of you._

“She was very persuasive.”

“Enough to sway you?” he asked pointedly. There were bodies behind Leliana, he could see them as clearly as he could see the ones behind himself as well. He was here to do something about that and Leliana seemed to be resisting doing the same. It was odd that she had listened.

She glanced away and sighed. “Josie reacted much the same as you did, Commander.” Turning around the leave, she called back over her shoulder. “I’ll leave a copy of the report on the Herald on your desk.”

* * *

 

The report stayed untouched on his desk. He would come back to it every night, curiosity burning in his fingertips, but he held it back. As much as he wanted to know what had made her that way, he held respect for her privacy. There was the desire to be _told_ instead of just finding it out. Templars read into things, invaded their charges privacy. But she wasn't his charge and he wasn't a Templar, and gaining her trust was as good a place as any to start. Had she been someone else, he probably would’ve just read the damned thing. As Leliana had put it, _Know the enemy_.

But she wasn’t the enemy and he didn’t want to be hers.

The Herald didn’t return on schedule. A tall elf with short cropped hair and a loud voice returned instead and demanded a place to sleep. Josephine was hesitant to keep her and Leliana was amused when she identified herself as the one of many Red Jennys. A letter accompanied her, though, written in the Herald’s own script and signed with her flourishing hand. The elf was given lodging next to the tavern, a location that seemed to delight her greatly. She certainly made the nights at dinner livelier, loosing a round of arrows every so often and sticking numerous birds. Many took to her easily, though Cullen preferred to take his meals outside the tavern after her arrival. It was loud and his headaches didn’t do so well around her.

Two days more and still no Herald, one Madame de Fer arrived, along with a small entourage and numerous trunks of her possessions. The letter she handed Cullen upon arrival was written in her own hand with an addendum from Cassandra at the bottom that read _Dangerous_. Women of the court were hardly anything other than.

Vivienne told of her happening upon the Herald to him and the other advisers once she was settled in the Chantry. To hear her tell it, Clara had wandered in and was set upon by a disgraced nobleman. She spoke of the frown she wore and the lightness in her voice as Clara asked for the retribution to be more corporeal and the odd satisfaction on the Herald’s face as she watched the dead man collapse onto the floor.

Cullen shelved it away for later, _hoping_ he could remember it. The Herald was bitter, an angry woman who had become a beacon of hope to so many. Her words didn’t sting as much as she probably wished them too and she had personally asked for a death that was unnecessary.

That military part of him said _Just_ and _Practical_ , allowing someone who had disgraced himself so publicly and in such a way should be dealt with swiftly. It wouldn’t do anyone any favors if he had stayed and worked even harder against the Inquisition.

The other part said it was extraneous, she was doing it just to be cruel. And it was probably the truth.

Reports came back as well, each one about what she was doing. She was _helping_ , had decimated a band of mercenaries operating in the Storm Coast and managed to even get them on the side of the Inquisition. Apparently, she had been savaged by the dogs during the fight, but still managed to win, not even waiting for the leader to beg for mercy before she drove her stave through his chest. In the letters that came with, Cassandra indicated that the Herald was cooperating _somewhat_ better, most likely docile from the sedatives the healers gave her for the pain. It was anyone’s best guess, really.

She returned five days after Vivienne with a mass of ragtag soldiers following her. Questions burned his tongue when he saw her, red hair out of its usual tight bun and about her face. It did a good job of covering the thick bandage around her shoulder and collarbone, but it fell short when the wind blew it out of the way. He turned away from her, chest fluttering from the sight of her when the leader of the band introduced himself as _The Iron Bull_ , laughing as he said the name. It had been perhaps six years since the Commander had been face to face with a Qunari, but he would never forget the feeling of being dwarfed by such an enormous presence.

When he was finally released, finding the Qunari to be surprisingly courteous and extremely unlikely to attempt a takeover, he turned and caught the Herald watching him. The air tightened again, pulled taut as she looked away, a blush burning brightly on her face. Cullen suddenly didn't know what to do with his hands and looked away for something else to do, settling on welcoming the other members of the Chargers. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Josephine being led away by The Bull to discuss rates and cringed on her behalf. There was no doubt in his mind that the Chargers weren’t going to be _painfully_ expensive.

Greetings were abruptly shoved aside as Cassandra laid out the plans for what was going to be done about the Breach. The War Council was summoned and the options were put out: they could either go to the rebel mages for help sealing the Breach, or ask the remaining Templars.

His mind snapped at hearing her consider the mage rebellion as a _good_ idea. He’d seen what too much magic did, what it had _already_ done to the sky. The thought of her pouring more magic into her Mark just to have a chance at closing the Breach made his skin crawl. Cold fear slid down his spine as he protested, unmoving even as the other advisers tried to speculate on the possibility.

Watching the Herald over the War Table as she listened to him, he saw the turning point right there in her eyes.

“I will meet with Grand Enchanter Fiona,” she declared, her long fingers grasping the token and placing it over Redcliffe.

“Herald, _please_ reconsider--” he tried again before she cut him off.

“I’m the one sealing the Breach, I think I can manage to drag myself to Redcliffe and just meet with the Grand Enchanter,” she said loudly, effectively shutting him down.

He straightened up and relaxed himself, hands finding the pommel of his sword easily. “If that’s your final decision,” he said blankly. _I have to speak with her afterward, she could kill herself doing this._

“It is,” she said simply, looking down at the table and resetting a few of the pieces.

He could feel the other’s eyes on him as the meeting closed and they were cleared to leave early the next morning, everyone eager to move everything along. Soon this would be taken care of, they’d elect a new Divine, and they could go back to setting Thedas to rights. The closing had an odd sense of finality to it and though he knew Clara was just going to _meet_ with the rebel mages, she would side with them. Perhaps it was because she was a mage herself or because she just couldn’t bear the thought of siding with the Templars.

Either way it didn’t matter. He still managed to catch before dinner that night, found her wandering around inside the Chantry as the sun set heavy and red through the windows. The green cast from the Breach could already be seen starting to encroach, readily sucking up the darkness the sun had started to leave behind.

“Herald!” he called out as he saw her shadow slinking towards the door.

She stopped and turned quickly, the air pulling closely as he approached. “Yes, _Commander_?” she asked, his title sounding like a curse in her mouth.

He stopped walking, giving her the space it seemed she needed and the air loosened. He cleared his throat and gripped his sword, suddenly unsure of where to put his hands. “I wanted to know if you were alright,” he settled on saying.

“Is there a reason I wouldn’t be?” she asked, tone cold.

He looked at the thick bandage sticking up from under her coat and a few angry, healing teeth marks that were exposed. His chest squeezed when he saw them, aching even further as he looked up and saw the heavy bags under her eyes, her freckles startlingly dark against her pale skin. “You just don’t seem well and I wanted to talk about seeing the mages.”

“That’s right,” she said smartly. “You don’t trust mages and don’t think we can do anything about all of this. I’ve heard it all before and my mind's made up.”

“I didn’t say that--”

“You don’t need to!” she snapped. She took in a deep breath and the air came with her, pulled tighter than a bowstring as she pressed a hand to that scar on her face. She didn’t look imposing or angry, more upset with herself than with him. He could tell there was something else in her right then, that she was more than the woman who had set the Hinterlands right and more than the woman who had called for a man’s execution at an Orlesian estate. He wasn’t afraid of her and he found he probably cared about her more than he should’ve, he hadn’t even _known_ her for that long. He shoved the revelation aside in favor of _now_ , of making sure she didn’t hurt herself even more.

“Clara,” he said quietly, taking a step forward. He tried to make his voice open, tried to make something so she’d _listen_.

She took a step back and the sickening light from outside cast itself over her face. He could feel fear from her but she looked ready for something, ready to just let _go_. His heart hammered loudly in his chest and he leaned away, suddenly sickeningly afraid he’d misjudged her. For a moment, she looked threatening in the Chantry, every bit the dangerous mage he was sure she wanted people to believe she was. His heart climbed into his throat as he blinked, her eyes too _blue_ to really belong to her.

She stepped back again and it was like it went back to normal. He couldn’t see so much of her and his grip on his pommel relaxed, the sudden tension of the moment gone.

 _“Don’t,”_ was all she said before she turned and pulled the doors to the Chantry open, her movements frantic as she desperately tried to get away from him. He let out a breath as the door slammed closed, the reverberations echoing the pounding that had started in his skull.

He cursed quietly to himself, his hands going up to rub his face. He dragged one through his hair, not caring right then if he messed up the style. It was amazing he was able to fuck that up so magnificently, but he’d managed it. It would’ve been impressive if it didn’t make him feel like he needed to hit something, his limbs still tingling from the feeling of her magic pulling closely as she readied herself for him to attack her. Talking to her was like all of those years in the Circle, heavy with fear he had learned to feel, but _Maker_ did he want to make her feel safer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we're moving things along here. Please remember to tell me how you feel and everything, I love hearing about it!


	4. She's Not so Horrible, He Finds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was just standing there in the green moonlight and the air didn’t feel like fear and she really was _lovely_. When she wasn’t frowning her face was beautiful and she wasn’t as mean as she said she was, as she _acted_. There was something better in her that was turning itself over and she seemed to be fighting it, a strange familiarity to him. The striking desire to get just a _bit_ closer gripped him then, his heartbeat in his ears as he coughed and turned away, the want to see what her hands would feel like rooting hard in the back of his skull. Her fingers were long and he wondered if she was cold. She probably wasn’t.

He woke up perhaps ten minutes before the horn sounded for the soldiers. Lying there in his sweaty sheets was preferable to trying to stand right then. That last nightmare right before he had jerked awake had been so _real,_ his limbs were still shivering from it. He could almost still hear the water of Lake Calenhad lapping at the shore, the ripples bright and the lake water so immensely _blue_. There weren’t any demons, but that was perhaps the worst part. The fear of where they were had still been with him, the smell of decay and rotting metal thick in the air as he felt the lyrium-blue water finally reach his feet, burning him where he stood.

It was a small comfort that he was still able to wake himself up.

Dressing was easier than normal, his joints choosing not to grind painfully when he moved. It was easier on days like this to tell himself it was all worth it, _would_ be worth it. The headaches, the nightmares, the joint pain, it meant _more_ than him. Freeing himself from the Order was more than putting down his shield, it was shaking the chains off completely and showing that it was _possible_. The withdrawals were worth it.

The lack of pain that day made watching the Herald and her team leave much easier. She left early, clearly eager to be off and seeming to make a point of not looking at him. The suspicion that it was because he had tried to reach out to her the day before was confirmed by Cassandra, who also decided to add that he should stop trying so hard if she was unwilling. It was pointless and the Herald was too stubborn to give up.

He conceded that she was perhaps correct but asked that Cassandra just speak with her about it. It was clear the Herald trusted the Seeker, albeit without seeming to _like_ her much. Perhaps that was how she showed her acceptance, however. As he had already come to know, _nothing_ about the Herald seemed to be normal.

Cassandra agreed and saddled up, telling him she would write back on their progress. He took it and watched her ride off with the Herald, her helmet winking in the pink sunlight. Madame de Fer accompanied her, along with Sera, the former riding tall in her saddle while the latter sat slumped rubbing the sleep from her eyes. _What a team_ they’ll _make_ , he thought as he saw Vivienne snap at the elf to straighten up. _Those letters should be interesting_.

And they were. They returned after a week, along with a Grey Warden. The man was broad and quiet and took residence at the stables. He spoke well enough of the Herald, as well anyone really _could_ speak of her. She hadn’t made the effort to make conversation with him, but he seemed to be relieved about that. He was just glad she hadn’t brought him to see the mages at Redcliffe; _that_ was ripe to be a bad time.

Cullen couldn’t help but agree. Reading the reports that came back with him said that they had found more and more mage stragglers, the Herald growing more irate as they approached. Two days after Blackwall’s arrival, a headache started in the back of his skull as another letter along with a report showed up. Going to the mage rebellion had bled of bad ideas but his fears were only really a shadow of what had been happening. The whole of it turned his stomach, aggravating his headache even further until he was forced to take to bed for two days.

He missed the Herald’s homecoming, the party returning late at night. He woke up early the morning after, nightmares finally breaking for a night where he couldn’t remember his dreams, but knew they had been good. It was a welcome reprieve, clearing his head and aches enough for him to shave his face without fear of taking off a lip or piece of skin. The beard he had managed to build had been thick and protected against the biting winds of the Frostbacks, but keeping clean-shaven was worth more than that. It was a small piece of control, something he wished he could manage more often and something he wished he didn’t _have to_ wish to be able to do.

A War Council was summoned as soon as Cassandra spotted him wandering out of his room. She pounced immediately, rushing him towards the door to the room while she went off to rouse the Herald.

“Nice of you to join us Commander,” Leliana said smoothly, her hands clasped tightly behind her back.

“Some of us enjoy sleeping ‘til a reasonable hour,” Josephine said with a yawn. Her face was still puffy with sleep and her hair was in a looser bun than usual without the braids. The ruffles of her shirt looked significantly deflated as well.

“I hope you weren’t waiting long,” Cullen said, his eyes moving to the end of the table when he heard something rustling.

The man standing there was of mid height, looked to be no older than 30 and appeared distinctly _northern_. That analytical side of Cullen read the staff leaned casually against the wall behind him along with the bits of magical artifacts clinging to him and said _mage_ quite clearly. The lack of tightness in the air spoke he wasn’t afraid and actually seemed quite relaxed. That could be either very good or very bad.

Cullen cleared his throat. “Excuse me?” He stood stiffly, the slight crackle of magic making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

The man looked up, a smile pulling wide and bright as he breathed deeply through his nose. “Ah, so you’re the Commander the Seeker has worked herself up over, then?” He breathed in again and tilted his head to the side. “She never mentioned you were a _Templar_.”

Cullen’s face hardened and his lips pressed together. He heard Josephine sigh and something that sounded suspiciously like a giggle from Leliana but he kept his eyes on the mage. “I’m the Commander of the Inquisition, _not_ a Templar.”

“You make a poor case for that, my friend,” he said, looking down and continuing to fiddle with the token he had grabbed. “Then again, I’m not around southern Templars so often. Perhaps my nose is wrong.”

Cullen groaned and looked at the women, found them enjoying themselves, and turned back to the mage. “Maker’s breath, who _are_ you?” He looked at Leliana again. “What is he doing in here?”

She just smiled serenely at him, the entire look _infuriating_ on her face and didn’t answer. Cullen groaned again and turned back to the man, ready to demand an answer or _something_ , when the door opened and Cassandra strode in, the Herald following closely behind.

Cullen’s mouth snapped shut, what he had been about to say dying behind his lips. Clara glanced up at him and looked _startled_ of all things, the air pulling with her as she moved to stand at her place at the table. He looked at the man again and found him grinning, hair shining in the warm light of the room. Sighing, Cullen moved around him to stand by Leliana and Josephine.

“I see you’ve already met Dorian, Commander,” Cassandra said as she flattened out parts of the map.

Cullen looked at the man sideways and saw him speaking quietly with the Herald. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Yes, well, you’ll get used to it,” she replied absently, eyes still scanning the table. She nodded once to herself and looked up, the wood creaking as she leaned her hands on it. “Let’s get to work.”

The meeting was over too quickly, the Herald’s mind already clearly made up as she proclaimed that she would be going to the mages for aid in sealing the Breach. Maker’s _breath_ , it was infuriating just to speak with her! She didn’t listen and steadfastly ignored what he had to say. Leliana and Josephine didn’t put up any resistance to the idea and Cassandra appeared more resigned than anything and the mage they had brought back only encouraged this trap.

As it ended, Cullen rounded on the other advisers after the Herald and Tevinter had left.

“Even if we have a way into the castle, how can we be sure nothing will happen to the Herald before your people can get to the throne room?” he asked Leliana. His back had started aching a bit and he kept his posture stiff, hand gripping the pommel of his sword tightly.

“Give me more credit, Commander,” she said dryly. “I can still remember the passage as if it were yesterday. Though to be fair, it’ll probably have fewer corpses wandering around.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Josephine cut in, still writing on her clipboard. “Tevinter has odd customs.”

Cullen groaned as Leliana gave a short laugh. “I’d expect you both to be more worried about this. If anything happens to her, we could lose our _only_ way of sealing rifts.”

Leliana shrugged and looked at him, placing down the token she had been fiddling with. “She’s clearly made up her mind and trying to sway her would only make her more convicted.” She moved around the table and walked past Cullen, feet silent on the stone floor. “Don’t try to talk her out of it, she’s an adult who can make decisions.”

“It’s a bad one,” he managed gruffly.

She laughed, pulling the door to the War Room open. “Even so, it is still hers to make.”

Josephine filed out after her, leaving him with a sympathetic look. The door closed softly and he sighed to himself, running a hand over his hair. As much as he wanted to stop this and put the Herald somewhere safer, Leliana was right. She was free to make choices and probably picked her fellow mages on principle. If he was being honest with himself, his preference for asking the Templars wasn’t entirely without resentment for the other side. He fisted the hand not holding his sword and hesitated before gently hitting the side of it against the doorframe.

He stayed in the War Room for perhaps two hours, putting off leaving the room in favor of reviewing the folder Leliana had prepared for her infiltration squad for Redcliffe. The fact that she had even had the thing drawn up the night before told that she knew what the Herald’s intentions were. While her intuition was impressive, it was maddening that she was so sure.

Sighing, he left the War Room with the folder in hand, nodding to Madam de Fer as he left. Vivienne wasn’t _warm_ per se, but she offered acceptance he hadn’t really come to know from mages. It was as comforting as it was shaming.

The light outside was too bright and his eyes burned as he waited for them to adjust to the stark white mountains. There was too much glare in frostbacks, it seemed wholly unnecessary. All of this snow was going to be a disadvantage should Haven ever fall under siege. It was too slippery and easy to fall and get trampled to death. Perhaps he would speak with Cassandra about--

“Commander!” the Tevinter called, startling him out of his thoughts.

Cullen glanced over at him, the man coming into focus with Clara standing next to him. She looked like nothing more than a red smudge, her hair and scarf bright crimson against the snow. The man, Dorian, was waving, his staff in hand as he leaned on it. Hesitantly, Cullen waved back, unsure of what he was getting at. Whatever it was, it was probably going to be unpleasant.

“Is there something you needed?” Cullen asked, his eyes flicking towards the Herald. She glanced away when he looked at her, both of them blushing.

“Yes, actually, I wanted to formally introduce myself,” he said smoothly. Holding a hand out, he flashed a bright grin. “Dorian of House Pavus, as you have already been informed, I’m from a bit further north than you are.”

Cullen’s mouth pulled into a half-smile at Dorian’s easy countenance. “Tevinter _is_ far from here,” he grinned, folding his arms over his chest.

“And a far cry warmer, I must say,” he said as he leaned on his staff. “Now, Cassandra informed me that you resigned from the Order and that my insistence was unnecessary. In the spirit of making sure I don’t end up Silenced and tossed to the bottom of the lake, however, is the Inquisition comfortable working with a mage?”

Cullen swallowed and stopped himself from turning to look at the Herald, though he could _feel_ her looking at him. “Are you asking me if _I_ am comfortable or if those in Haven are?”

“It’s a blanket question.”

“Most are comfortable, though I would refrain from playing up the _‘Tevinter Magister’_ angle,” he said. He uncrossed his arms and sighed. “I personally have no problem unless you do something to compromise anyone’s safety here.”

“Ah, I see,” Dorian said easily. “No blood sacrifices, then.”

Cullen stared at him, half caught between taking it as a joke or saying that that was _exactly_ what he was talking about when he mentioned the _Tevinter Magister_ angle.

“Maker’s breath man, it’s a joke!” Dorian said when Cullen didn’t answer. He heard Clara sigh to the mage’s right and saw her rub her face out of the corner of his eye.

He looked at him for another moment before sighing. “Perhaps it wasn’t the best one.”

“Well, I will work on what to say should the villagers come after me with pitchforks.” He turned to the Herald then and pointed his staff towards one of the small shacks dotting the area. “I’m going to go finish moving my belongings into that hovel and _you_ should make up your mind as to who will be accompanying us tomorrow morning.”

She nodded and watched him as he crunched through the snow. Her eyes flicked to Cullen for a moment before she looked down, the air tightening as Dorian walked away. Cullen cleared his throat, hand gripping his sword pommel for want of something to say.

“You’re leaving very abruptly,” he said eventually, mind buzzing too loudly in the cold silence.

Her head snapped to look at him, eyes practically burning. “I don’t want to give Alexius anymore room.”

“Shouldn’t you rest a bit? You’ve been constantly moving since you woke up after stabilizing the Breach.”

“I’ll rest when I have the mages in the Inquisition and Alexius in chains,” she said mildly, looking away. “Why do you care? Are you going to try and talk me out of going to them again?”

“No,” he replied, shaking his head. “It’s… your decision to make.” _It’s your life to throw on the line._

“I don’t get many _real_ choices,” she said after a second. “Fiona was a fool for allying with Tevinter but I can’t let everyone there suffer for her bad choice.”

 _That’s kinder than I’ve come to believe you are_. “What Alexius used to control them, it was a form a blood magic, yes?”

“Typical Templar, everything you don’t understand is blood magic,” she sneered, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

He bristled at that. “I’m _not_ a Templar,” he said vehemently. She just looked away, infuriatingly _silent_ for a full minute before he sighed. “I trust you’re going to answer me?”

“It was,” she said with a shrug. “As Dorian stated at the War Table, what Alexius is doing is too big of a threat to just let _happen_.”

“And you’re comfortable accepting his trap?”

She made a noise of disgust and lightly rubbed her hand over her scar. “Do you think I am?”

 _No_. “Would it matter if you weren’t?”

He could’ve swore he saw the corners of her lips twitch up just a bit, not really a smile. Something amusing must have crossed her mind or an old memory fogged her over. Her eyes had taken on a glassy look, distant and familiar as he knew the feeling all too well. She breathed in slowly and the air pulled just a bit more tightly but he had the sneaking suspicion it wasn’t because he was near, for once.

“I’m sure my comfort is the least on everyone’s minds,” she muttered in a way that said _I’m never comfortable_.

His eyes followed where she was looking, Adan walking out of the hut to hassle Dorian for all the noise he was causing as he moved his items around. He doubted she was actually watching.

“We rarely get easy choices,” he said evenly, forcing himself not to look at her even as he saw her turn out of the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry that you don’t even get those precious few.”

He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the way her guard dropped from the air. It was looser, draping over him instead of holding closely to her body. After finally _seeing_ the fear in mages’ eyes after so many years of blindness, it was basely satisfactory to set her more at ease around him. He was meant to _protect and serve,_ and it had taken too long to see that the Order wasn’t doing either.

Opening his eyes, he found her looking at him.

“That was very… _kind_ of you,” she said quietly. Her hand was gripping her scarf almost painfully hard, skin pulled taut and pale. She looked at him for a moment, pale eyes flicking around his face before she frowned, her eyebrows coming together. “You shaved.”

“I’ve been known to do that,” he said slowly, confusion spreading under his words. “Is this about anything?”

She cleared her throat and glanced away, looking as disinterested as someone could. “No, I’m just glad you’ve decided to clean yourself up,” she said mildly, a heavy blush spreading up from her neck and onto her face.

 _And you were so close to saying something halfway decent, too_. “I’ll speak with you before you depart,” he said tiredly as he turned to leave. It suddenly wasn’t worth it right then.

* * *

 

She left early the next morning, Blackwall and Varric accompanying her and Leliana as they rode out. Before leaving, she commented that the Commander of the Inquisition shouldn't look as exhausted as he did before mounting her horse and riding away. He decided that taking it as mild concern for his wellbeing was better than accepting the insult. Coming from her, he was willing to believe it was partly both.

Cassandra found him later in the day at the training grounds, her practice sword clutched tightly in her hand. “You can see the Herald did not take me with her,” she grunted, smacking the dummy with the wooden sword

Cullen stepped out of the way of her sword, eager to avoid personal injury. “She took Warden Blackwall with her.”

“And _Varric_.” Another smack to the dummy, pieces of hay flying out. “I told her that I wished to accompany her, that my abilities as a Seeker would be beneficial against blood mages.” _Smack!_ “She blurted out that she was taking Blackwall with her.”

“Perhaps she is afraid of you, Cassandra,” he offered, leaning an arm on the pommel of his sword. _Perhaps_ may not have been the best way to phrase it, but _perhaps_ was all he really knew about the Herald.

Cassandra laughed once, the sound a short bark. “No, that is not the case,” she said as she rolled her shoulders, eyes still trained on the dummy. “She wishes to bring the mages in as equals and knows how opposed I am to that.”

“Did you expect her to imprison her own people?” he asked.

She whacked the dummy so viscously the bucket helmet came off, skittering to a halt at Cullen’s feet. As he bent to pick it up, Cassandra cursed and stuck the sword in the snow. “Yes, I actually thought she was planning to until yesterday. And is it really so difficult to believe that she would want to keep them under watch after they allied with _Tevinter?”_

He handed the bucket to her and crossed his arms over his chest. “It makes sense to not want them wandering around unchecked, but she grew up in a Circle.” _She hates Templars and agreeing with others._

Cass shook her head. “You should’ve heard what she said to the Grand Enchanter when we met with her.” She put the bucket back on the dummy.

“I understand it was insulting?”

“Extremely so,” she said, turning to get her practice sword. “It was completely _true_ , however, and I can’t help but feel like she’s bringing the mages in simply because we said she shouldn’t. She doesn’t seem to hold her fellow mages in such high esteem.”

“That certainly sounds like something she would do,” he admitted. “Also considering her other option was asking the remaining Templars, it probably _wasn’t_ much of a choice for her.”

“She is very prejudiced on that front,” Cassandra agreed. Half-heartedly hitting the dummy, she sighed. “I cannot blame her; the Chantry has failed so many, but the mages especially.”

His gut clenched at the truth in the statement. _That_ was why he was here, why he had left the only life he had known. It wasn’t about his own happiness or atoning for what he had done, all of this was _bigger_ than he was. It was about _protecting_ , not fear, magic is meant to serve man and never to rule over him but they _had_ let it rule over them. Mages were kept locked away and brought out to heal the rich, their magic being all that stood between the Circle and that home on the hills, the sky over their heads instead of a spiraling tower or slave gallows. They shouldn’t be left around unchecked, just as dangerous as anyone with a blade, but they shouldn’t be pressed away and terrified of those who were supposed to protect them.

Cullen drilled the soldiers until noon, the sun hanging pale in the white sky. When lunch was called, Cassandra forced him to eat something, the sentiment easing the ache in his joints. She was so _solid_ he envied how easy it was for her to believe and push herself. The woman ran off of faith and training, convicted and burning brightly. She was good to have around for every reason.

The days after the Herald’s departure were like clockwork. He rose at dawn and dressed, drilled the soldiers and reviewed the growing reach of the Inquisition. It was good to see happening, the way their influence was spreading over southern Ferelden. The Herald was _helping_ people despite how sour she was. It was worth it to be a part of something that was helping so many people.

After ten days, a report came back. They were successful, the mages had been brought in and evicted from Ferelden. Loyalty to the Inquisition was definite seeing as they had nowhere else to go. Grand Enchanter Fiona sent her penitent thanks.

The rest past there read strangely. Something about magic rending time that he didn’t quite understand the possibility of, a demon army, a request for Adan to mix something for lyrium sickness. It appeared the Herald had a greater sensitivity to being touched by it than was originally seen at the Conclave blast site. Upon reading that last part, Cullen’s gut felt heavier than lead. Lyrium was poisonous to begin with, the _red_ variety even more so and unrefined was deadly to mages. Only after handing the reports to Josephine and setting Adan on making something to help the Herald did he correctly identify the feeling as _fear_.

The party returned eight days after the report came in, the entire compound sleeping. A magister was brought in in chains and promptly shoved into the dungeons for questioning. After him came the Herald, her hands heavily bandaged and seemingly useless under all the layers. Heart beat pounding in his skull, he followed the pages who brought her to the apothecary as far as the tavern side door and stood there as she screamed inside the shack, Adan cleaning her wounds with the potion Leliana had requested in her reports. He turned away after a moment, sure he shouldn’t be hearing it.

The Herald was kept in the shack throughout the night, Cullen leaving for his own bed without seeing her. She wouldn’t appreciate his presence, he reasoned, and this was too personal. As much as he wanted to talk to her and do _something_ , he could respect that she didn’t particularly enjoy being around him.

A War Council was summoned when he woke up and he dressed quickly, almost out of his room before he remembered his gloves. Picking them out of his drawer, he spotted the coin his brother had given him so many years ago and thought for a moment before pocketing it, thumb unconsciously brushing over the worn-away face as he slipped it into his pocket. _For luck_ , he remembered. Perhaps he should keep it on himself more often; he wasn’t in a place to brush any extra help aside.

The meeting was over quickly and the day dragged on as it normally would save the looks the Herald gave him that day. His coin was a good feeling in his pocket and it made her glances feel less malicious than they probably were. She walked around with Dorian, her feet unsteady as they talked. It was strange to see her connect with someone, but Cullen put it out of his mind. It felt like getting worked up about nothing, his neck flushing easily every time he looked at her.

Putting it away worked until dinner and he saw the Herald sitting there, bags heavy under her eyes. She was having trouble grabbing the bottle in front of her from the bandages on her fingers. The bottle toppled over on the table and she looked a second away from an outburst before the Tevinter righted it and threw his napkin over the puddle. Cullen’s heart clenched in a strange way to see her so and he couldn’t help but notice how she didn’t eat and how _tight_ the air felt. Feeling it was too crowded, he excused himself and breathed for a few moments outside, relieved that the sky was still overhead and not a ceiling, before going into the Chantry to distract himself with work.

Which is how he ended up staying late in the Chantry again, staring at the tokens and the knife the Herald had stabbed into the table. It stood tall, right over Redcliffe. If he closed his eyes he could still hear the sound it had made as her thin hands, bandaged and damaged, forced it down, the wood protesting at the violence. Right after that was Clara and her flat voice as she declared it finished. She hadn’t spoken of it again past the bare bones of what had happened and had since retired early, leaving the rest of them huddled around the War Table to drop off as the night wore on. The blade shuddered as he touched the pommel with his hand, the leather of his gloves squeaking slightly at the contact.

Sighing, Cullen peeled his gloves off and yanked the dagger free, a headache starting at the back of his skull. The blade winked in the flickering light as he laid it down on the table, right on the edge of the Free Marches. There was a small circle around Kirkwall, long since placed there by Cassandra before he had met her. She had come for Hawke and left with him and Varric, a poor tradeoff for the Champion, if truth be told. Hawke could’ve done something about this, if only he hadn't let her leave the _damned_ city all those years before--

Outside the War Room, something fell and crashed. It was followed closely by wings flapping and something clicking softly against the rough stones of the floor. Hand on his sword, he was at the door immediately, pushing it open and looking out. The sword came easily out of its sheathe, the cold sound of the slithering metal oddly comforting in his ears.

Instead of being met with a wolf or fox as he had expected, or perhaps even a thief, the Herald was standing there, thickly bandaged hands hovering in the air. The remains of a pot were at her feet, beads from inside of it still jumping as they skidded across the floor. Her eyes were as wide as plates in the cold moonlight, _fear_ written deep in them as the air tightened almost painfully.

He quickly slid the sword away, those eyes of hers following his hands. The air loosened slightly at it and it was a relief. She shouldn’t have to look so afraid, didn’t _want_ her to, not because of him.

“What are you doing up?” he asked quietly, shutting the door behind him.

She looked down at the shards on the ground and opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. “I remembered I had materials to bring Minaeve,” she said lamely, hands clasped tightly in front of herself.

“I doubt she’s awake now.” He bent down and picked up one of the larger shards.

She flushed darkly. “I _know_ that,” she snapped. Then the air loosened even further and she sighed, a hand rubbing at the scar on her face. “I was just going to leave it so she could see it when she woke up.”

He looked at her for a second, taking in the circles under her eyes and how pale her skin was under her freckles. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked. _This_ he understood, the need to wander when the moon rose. The rooms at Haven were too small.

Her face twisted momentarily, perhaps a beat away from saying something harsh. The expression dropped, though, and she sighed. “No. I just have a lot on my mind.”

“Would you like to take a walk?” he offered, muscles aching as he realized how _badly_ he wanted her to accept.

“I have to clean this up,” she said promptly, her stance shifting defensively.

“I’ll help you and you can leave it for Minaeve,” he said quietly, bending down to get another shard. For once, his joints weren’t protesting.

She swallowed, considering his offer and seemed to weigh her distaste for him against the sheer number of beads that had spilled out. She huffed and shuffled her feet anxiously before bending and starting to scoop the shards and beads up. Cullen bent his head to hide his grin as he picked up a few beads that had skittered by his boots. Standing, he offered them to the Herald.

She took them and placed them in the bowl she had made with the skirt of her nightdress. After a few more minutes of collecting, mostly everything had been gotten save the beads that had jumped too far away and a few small pieces of terracotta that were just going to be crushed underfoot come morning. A replacement pot was found and the beads were poured in, the larger chunks of the old pot thrown away so Minaeve didn’t cut her hands on them.

“Join me outside?” he asked softly once the Herald had shut the door to Josephine’s office gently behind her.

The air bunched up as she looked from him to the doors of the Chantry. His body ached from the fear in her and he just wished it would _stop_.

Still though, she nodded quickly and danced around him, feet taking her swiftly to the massive doors. He followed, his heavy footsteps echoing so much more than her light ones. The door protested when he shoved it open, the screaming of its hinges bouncing around in his head, a painful reminder that he still hadn’t managed to shake off the Order.

At least it was cold outside. The frosty air always helped, the wind in Ferelden was so much _better_  than it was in Kirkwall. It eased his headache slightly, waking him up and making him _painfully_ aware of the Herald’s presence.

“How are your hands?” he asked, mind failing him at anything else to say.

The Breach writhed in the sky, menacing and green. It cast eerie shadows down her face, her expression twisting and the hand she had clutching at the collar of her shirt falling down. The bandages on them were thick but he could see the lyrium burns peeking out from between them. “They’ll be fine,” she ground out.

“Alright then,” he said, cutting to the chase. “Why are you awake?”

“Coming from the man who always has bags under his eyes.”

“I believe I asked you a question,” he said pointedly.

Seeming too tired to keep up her usual games, she just sighed. “It’s hard to sleep now.”

“Because of what happened in Redcliffe?” He stepped a bit closer, her guard down for once.

She shrugged. “Perhaps. I’ve been… having nightmares,” she admitted, sounding like she was forcing herself to speak.

He breathed out, heart thudding with the familiar territory. “You haven’t said much past what Sister Leliana dragged out of you,” he said softly.

“Well you already know that the world pretty much ended,” she said frankly, her eyes trained on the Breach. The green glow made her skin look too pale, freckles darker than they should’ve been. Cullen noticed a birthmark on her collarbone, looking away swiftly after seeing. “Nearly everyone was dead because I wasn’t there.”

“You know you have a purpose now,” he said. “None of this could’ve been random, you have a duty to use your Mark.”

“You would know about duty,” she mumbled, turning to look at him. She met his eyes easily and it unsettled him more than it should have.

Looking away towards the lake, he rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t mean to put more on you,” he said, wanting a better way to say it but coming up short of one.

“No, I get it,” she said quietly, her feet crunching in the snow. “You’re telling me the truth.”

 _I don’t lie._ “You can see Toth tonight,” he said quickly, fighting the heat that rose in his face. _Maker_ he felt too nervous for no reason.

“Excuse me?”

“The constellation,” he said, pointing. With a small note of pride, he noticed that she didn’t flinch away when his arm moved in front of her. “The Breach isn’t covering it anymore.”

His eyes flicked down and saw her staring at him. “We weren’t discussing stars,” she said flatly.

“It was… just an observation,” he said, bringing his hand to rub at his neck. “If you take your mind off of what happened in Redcliffe perhaps you’ll sleep better,” he added. _Maker, I’m terrible at this_.

“That’s very… kind of you,” she said, confused like she hadn’t _expected_ him to be the way he was. Honestly, he wasn’t sure why he said half the things around her that he did.

“You’re just tired and I thought I could help a bit.” _I don’t sleep either and I know it’s a hell._ “How are you now?”

She turned and stared at the Breach for a moment. “I’ll be okay. Putting Alexius in chains made me feel better. Talking to Dorian about what happened _makes_ me feel better; he’s the only one who remembers what happened.” Looking at him sideways, the corner of her mouth quirked up. “I suppose you helped a _bit_.”

She was just standing there in the green moonlight and the air didn’t feel like fear and she really was _lovely_. When she wasn’t frowning her face was beautiful and she wasn’t as mean as she said she was, as she _acted_. There was something better in her that was turning itself over and she seemed to be fighting it, a strange familiarity to him. The striking desire to get just a _bit_ closer gripped him then, his heartbeat in his ears as he coughed and turned away, the want to see what her hands would feel like rooting hard in the back of his skull. Her fingers were long and he wondered if she was cold. She probably wasn’t.

“That’s very kind of you,” he managed, looking away again. The lake looked strange in the green moonlight but it was black, not blue. He took a deep breath and held it, willing away the slight throb at his temples.

“Yes, well, I should head to bed,” she said quickly, the sounds of her boots crunching in the snow as she shuffled in place loud in the silent darkness.

“Try to get some sleep, Herald,” he said softly, mind still reeling from the softness he felt for her. “You look like you haven’t slept properly in days.”

“That’s not true,” she snapped. The report Leliana had filed after the War Council said that she hadn’t, though, so many nights of travel had found her awake and restless.

Instead of saying that, he just softly told her goodnight. She didn’t offer one back but she stared at him, eyes searching for almost an entire minute before she crossed her arms over her chest and walked away.

He stared at the Breach until her footsteps died away, eyes watching as it twisted in the clear sky. Finding it burned his eyes to watch for too long, or _he_ was tired, he turned away and left for his own room. Dressing to sleep went by slowly, his joints stiff as he unhooked his armor. It wasn’t until he was feeling around in his pockets before he climbed into bed that he remembered the coin.

It was cool against his fingers, the acrid smell of metal biting and familiar. A grin crept onto his face as he stared at the worn surface. Speaking with Clara hadn’t gone horribly wrong for once. Perhaps it was still lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took a long time to put out but I really just want to say how much i'm enjoying writing and your feedback means the world to me!


	5. Reasons for Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fact that they were most certainly _just_ dreams didn’t stop him from relishing them and actually start looking forward to sleeping. It didn’t matter that they were far too few and between, or that they were just blurry things while the nightmares were sharper than steel. She was new, the entire Inquisition too recent for those darker parts of his head to know them enough to hurt him with them. The red hair, the sharp eyes, the oddly shaped birthmark on her collarbone were all _safe,_ too new for the demons to know her shape.

The morning after speaking with the Herald outside was pleasant. He saw her at service and she didn’t glare at him when he inclined his head in greeting, conscious of the feeling of the coin in his pocket. It wasn’t the warmer reception he craved, but it was better than nothing. With her, he was willing to take what he could get. Something was better than nothing, and even nothing would have been preferable to the sheer terror that used to hang thickly in the air around her when they had first met. Cold acceptance was better than that.

The day passed without incident, a few reports returning about the Inquisition soldiers sent to the Fallow Mire on reconnaissance. The weight of the coin in his pocket was a reminder of how she had looked in the green darkness the night before, her face so much different as he watched her over the War Table to discuss finding the missing soldiers. Right there in the warm stuffiness of the chantry she was the Herald, eyes quick and words cut tightly. In the stiff air the night before, the sharper side of her tongue had been put away, her body softened by exhaustion, she had been the Marcher mage, angry but not wholly terrible. It had been nice.

Then, that night after catching her scurrying up from the dungeon with Sera and attempting to socialize a bit more, he retired. His joints felt stiff and the back of his head ached, the pain easing as he peeled off the layers of plate and leather and lied back on his narrow mattress. It felt like he was settling into the feathers that filled it, sinking quickly into the thin thing. It was a step up from his bed back in Kirkwall, and he was very nearly pulled back there before he pressed his hands into his eyes and rolled his face into his pillow. He didn’t think much after that.

His dreams were often hazy things, more smoke and old memories that were broken apart and put together in different ways. They were different from the nightmares, less substantial and harder to recall when he woke up. As much as he loved them, he didn’t get the chance to dream nearly enough, his night hours more often than not filled with demons fracturing like mirrors, ancient terrors that ripped off their faces to show all those friends he had lost years before. The dreams were better, even if he couldn’t remember them.

This time, though, it felt different. He woke up later than usual with an odd stiffness in his neck. _No nightmares_ , he could tell that right away. He flexed his hands in the filtering morning light, dustmotes catching the yellow sunshine as he fought to hold onto those last precious images his mind had assembled before they slipped through his fingers.

They felt distinctly _red_ , an odd thing to remember. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, sighing as he mentally prepared himself for the day. He still had a few minutes to just sit there, he was sure, the War Council wouldn’t be meeting for at least an hour.

Still though, he got up and dressed because inactivity made his head hurt and joints ache. The pain was imagined, he was sure, but it still _felt_ real. Old habits died hard and sitting around had been beaten out of him twenty years before. Military restraint and punctuality were there now, in the quickness of his fingers as he fastened himself into his armor, mind wandering as he went through the motions. _Red_ , he recalled as his spine clicked when he twisted to fasten his breast plate. _I don’t have any reason for_ red. _The dreams are usually blue._

But then seeing the Herald as she filed into the meeting later, red hair nearly orange in the candlelight and shining in contrast to the dark freckles all over her skin, he knew he most certainly had a reason for red.

“We’ll move out in three days,” she said shortly after the meeting had dragged on for a bit. One of her bandaged hands went up and brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear, the color dark and shimmering in the candlelight.

Cullen cleared his throat, swallowing down how it had tightened as he watched her. “We will send a retinue of soldiers with you as well to alleviate those in the Mire.”

Her eyes flicked up to his, not as cold blue as they looked in daylight. “A full retinue shouldn’t be required,” she replied airily, a hand gripping her scarf tightly. Even in the orange light of the room he could see the freckles peaking through the bandages on it, dark against her pale skin.

 _Just take the help, for once._ “Scout Harding’s reports were very detailed and we are apprehensive about sending you in alone.” He pushed a piece on the map over slightly so it covered the Storm Coast completely.

“You don’t think I can handle it by myself?” she asked quickly, voice bristling up instantly.

 _Maker take me, I’m_ worried _for you._ “I prefer to err on the side of caution, Herald.”

“I’m not _helpless--”_

“No one said you were, save yourself,” Leliana cut in with a firm voice. “A full retinue is a good idea, it would increase our hold in the area and give replacements for the missing soldiers.” A smile was dancing around the edge of her lips again, halfway to a laugh. As fantastic as she was at her job, her unsavory nature and dueling dispositions put the Commander on edge.

“He doesn’t _trust me!_ ” Clara exclaimed, voice shrill and indignant. The hand gripping her scarf loosened enough for her to point at him, fingers long and slender, even with the thick dressings covering her lyrium burns.

Cullen coughed to hide his snort at her tone, knowing it would only set her off even more. As lovely as her face was, there were those old hurts festering right behind it. They were the tightness in the air, the protective curve of her body when she was left alone with him, the way her eyes shifted from careful and calculating to nervous flicks as she shuffled her feet. It all cut at him wrong, left his hands feeling empty and tied as he tried to earn _some_ kind of trust from her.

The Herald took a deep breath and glared at him for a moment before opening her mouth again, two steps from saying something terrible, he was sure. Cassandra cut her off with a swift motion, platemail clicking as she cut her arm through the air with finality.

 _“Enough,”_ she said sternly. “As your advisors, we only want to do what is best and the Commander’s idea _is_ the best one.”

Cullen marvelled at how easily the Seeker shamed her. Clara flushed darkly, eyes looking at the map while she calmed down, the air tightening heavily with her own despondence. She looked like a cat that had been yelled at, like the mousers at the Gallows had whenever a cook had caught them sneaking away with food from the larder.

The meeting ended quickly after that, the Herald thoroughly cowed into silence, though she still looked at Cullen with a strange sort of venom. It wasn’t as hateful as he had expected it to be, more resentful if anything. It was a step up, something nice after so many others filled with fear and hate. A step in the right direction, something that only made that terrible affection he felt wind itself more tightly around him.

She disappeared into the bowels of the chantry after the meeting, feet quick and silent as she closed the dungeon door swiftly behind her. As if sensing what he was thinking, Josephine came up next to him and tapped the end of her pen against his armor.

“She’s avoiding paperwork,” she said curtly, words rolling out of her mouth. Even with her apparent annoyance, she didn’t sound half as exasperated as she probably was.

Cullen smiled softly, still looking at the dungeon door. Josephine’s words always _sounded_ pretty, even when they weren’t. She had a way with them, he supposed, not just in how she said them but in how they settled in the air. Maker take him if he could ever manage to sound as eloquent as she did; then again he’d probably have her job and _that_ would have been enough for him to ask the Maker to take him in earnest.

“Her and Sera were in there last night,” he said. “I doubt it has anything to do with paperwork.”

Josie made a soft _tut_ and he heard her pen scratching softly as she wrote something down. “Oh, I know what she was up to. Her and Sera were unlocking every unoccupied room down there, then they both menaced Magister Alexius.”

“She _menaced_ him.”

“That’s the only way I can think to describe placing cooling spells under the man until he nearly froze to death.” The soft scratching ceased and she sighed, clipboard clicking as she rearranged the papers. “The pages found him frozen nearly to death this morning. It took three Templars to dispel the charms and two mages to thaw him out.”

Cullen looked down at her out of the corner of his eye. “Remind me why we haven’t done anything more permanent with him?”

Josie quirked her head to the side, skin shiny in the filtering light. “As much as being rid of him would make all of our lives immensely easier, we can’t just execute him.”

“And why not?” he asked stubbornly, folding his arms over his chest. “He wronged the Inquisition and nearly destroyed all of Thedas. A headman seems to be all he deserves.”

“A headman, yes. Someone to _give_ the headman orders, however, is not something we have at present.”

 _And there it is._ “We need an Inquisitor.”

“You’re very astute, Commander.”

He felt himself flush, his lips mashing into a thin line as he looked at the faint smirk on Josephine’s face. “I’m not nearly as dull as you all seem to think,” he half-huffed, turning back to look at the Dungeon door. Dorian passed with an armful of scrolls, smirking when he saw the Commander and gave a wave. Cullen waved back, already counting the number of ways the man would make his day more difficult in the back of his head.

“Oh, _no_ ,” Josephine said pleasantly. “We know you are quite capable, Commander, otherwise Seeker Pentaghast would not have brought you here. However, we need someone with a delicate touch and your hands are perhaps a tad too large for that.”

 _I don’t want to be_ Inquisitor _._ “I’m not suggesting _I_ \--” he started, turning to her in surprise.

“It’s a _joke_ , Commander,” she said with a sigh, turning back to her paperwork. “Perhaps learn to take one.”

“It’s not a joke to anyone else. You seem overworked, Josephine.” He looked more closely at her, at the circles under her eyes and the paleness under her dark skin.

She didn’t look up at him at first, instead tapping her pen against the blotter on the board. After writing something down, she turned to face him. “If I’m anything it’s because the Herald doesn’t cooperate. She’s always running off or hiding somewhere and she scares away the pages I send to fetch her.”

He looked back at the door and rolled his shoulders, already kicking himself for what he was about to say. “Do you need me to get her?”

Josephine let out an unexpected laugh, the sound tittering out as she covered it behind her hand. He gave her a withering look and she controlled herself, her face sweet as she looked at him. “That’s a kind offer, Commander, but I’m sure you have better things to do than drag her to my office so she can scare off pilgrims.”

 _You’re damned right I have better things to do but I_ need _a reason if I want to see her._ “She can’t keep avoiding her work, she’s an adult.”

“You wouldn’t know that by talking to her,” she murmured.

“She’s the Herald of Andraste,” he said. His gut felt strange at saying it, like connecting the larger than life title with Clara’s face didn’t work properly. There was the Herald of Andraste, a woman who closed rifts and fed the refugees in the Hinterlands, and there was Clara, the mage who was more frigid than a night spent in a blizzard. They couldn’t _possibly_ be the same person.

But even so, it couldn't hurt to have a little faith. Perhaps even more than a little, considering the sky had been torn open and he had never been a man to subsist on just a _little_ belief.

“I doubt she believes that.”

“Do you?”

Josephine looked up at him and her eyes looked _far_ too clever for it to sit well with him. “Do I believe she is the Herald, or do I believe _she_ believes?” She glanced back at her clipboard and laughed, something small and clearly private. Looking back up at him, she turned her head to the side, clever eyes a strange sort of searching. “Do you?”

 _I have to_. “Don’t ask people that. We’re closest to her and if it sounds like we doubt anything, the Inquisition will be dead before it even starts walking.”

She smiled at him, clearly pleased with his answer. “You do have a head for politics after all,” she said approvingly. Turning, she started back to her office before stopping and looking back at him. “Please get the Herald. I need her signature and statements and I wasn’t kidding when I said she scared off the pages.”

He chuckled at the frazzled tone her words had taken and how her change in position had made her looked overworked again. Her eyes weren’t so clever and perhaps her lips weren’t smirking at some joke at his expense. “I can do that, Josephine.”

Her answering smile was grateful, shoulders just a bit more squared as she went back to her office. He saw her greet a noble at the door, an orlesian man with a gold masque on. Cullen pressed down the urge to roll his eyes and turned back to the dungeon door, straightened his back, and started towards it.

 _It won’t be so bad_ , he said to himself as he pulled it open. _You will ask her how she slept, see if her hands are better, and tell her she is needed with Josephine._

The descent into the dungeon wasn’t particularly long. It grew immensely colder as he walked down, and it couldn’t just be from the mountain snow. A few rats scurried by as he walked downward, squeaks shrill as they reverberated through the stone walls and the inside of his skull. By the time he had reached the bottom, an ache had started in his temples and his gut felt somewhat upset.

It certainly wasn’t helped as he hit his head on the chandelier dangling from the ceiling, cursing as he grabbed it before it swung back on the rebound.

“What are you doing here?” he heard her ask, voice sharp and high as it echoed along with the squeaking from the rusty chandelier.

He turned quickly to face her and found her at the far end of the room. “I could ask you the same thing,” he called back, suddenly hungry for anything like the conversation they had had the night before. His words misted thinly in the air in front of his face, skin prickling at the artificial coldness.

“I’m visiting my prisoner,” she answered, folding her arms over her chest, stance defiant.

He released the chandelier and resisted the urge to wipe his gloves off on his surcoat. Instead, he flexed his hands a few times, willing the sudden nervousness away as he approached slowly. “You were here yesterday.”

She was watching him come closer, the air practically _tasting_ like magic. It wasn’t pulled tightly like a bowstring, but it was _dense_. Like it was too humid, Alexius and the Herald held the air in a grip too tight to yank from one another. Neither would give.

“I’m allowed to be here,” she said after a moment. He had come to stand about five feet from her, the shadows across her face heavy and flickering from the surrounding torches.

“Freezing him to death isn’t going to do anything.” _Not anything permanent, at least._ He stepped a bit closer and peered into the cell at Alexius. “He can’t do anything with the runes in those shackles blocking his magic, either.”

“He deserves it,” she said blankly, looking at the magister curled up on the floor of the cell.

 _No doubt_. “If it were up to me we’d judge him already. It’s not worth it to keep expending resources so he’s alive and Tevinter is happy.”

She sighed but didn’t look away from Alexius. “No one’s ever going to be happy with any of this,” she muttered. His gut felt strange at her words, like the way she said them felt wrong. She had never minced her words, not even in the beginning when her fear had held the air in tight check, and even now they carried more weight than a grain horse.

“Something on your mind?” he asked softly, ignoring the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end when she tugged at the magic in the air. Alexius reacted almost immediately, shivering with a groan as he turned away from the cell door. Cullen’s joints felt like they were getting tugged along too, aching with familiarity. How many times had he felt this, that sensation he’d gotten so used to ignoring until he’d needed it? And now here it was, jammed under his skin as he resisted almost twenty years of training and routine so she didn’t make his life a living hell.

She looked at Alexius for a moment, the air getting colder as a fine frost started creeping up from the floor and over the wrought iron bars of the cell. “It’s on the floor right now,” she murmured.

Cullen shivered despite himself, the air too cold and too tight. Amazingly, she noticed and let up, turning to look at him as the cold receded. She stared at his face for a moment, both of them looking away quickly. A horrible blush crept up the back of his neck and he brought up a hand to rub at it, gut fluttering like he was a teenager. He heard her shuffle awkwardly next to him and he could only hope she didn’t notice how flustered he was.

“You’ll kill him if you keep doing this,” Cullen muttered for want of something to say.

“Good.” She crossed her arms and glared hard at the pile of the man on the floor. “He deserves it.”

 _Even if he deserves it, vengeance isn’t worth it._ “There isn’t any honor in attacking a man lying defenseless on the floor.”

“You weren’t _there_ ,” she snapped, head turning quickly to look at him.

“I still _know_ what he did.”

“You don’t know _anything_ ,” she pressed, face twisting angrily as she looked at him.

“So is there something you’re not sharing with your advisors?” he asked, chest holding a small swell of pride for how calm he sounded even though his heart felt like it was punching against his ribcage. He folded his arms over his chest as if to hold it together and stared at her. “You said you’d told us everything.”

She took a step back with a face like she was caught off guard. _Good_ , he thought as he watched her swallow and gather her thoughts. _You try being berated for once_. He put that soft spot for her away, the focus coming easily to him once he stopped trying to pull her apart in his head.

“No, I--” She closed her mouth and looked at him, head turning to the side curiously. “You were _dead_ ,” she said after a moment, words shaking as she said them.

He swallowed and they both stared at each other. Somewhere a little down and the left in his chest he felt his heart thump, swallowing again as he tried to press it back into place. He’d _known_ it had happened that way and it honestly hadn’t mattered to him. It was the way things were supposed to go, _had_ to be. He was expendable, military service had made damn sure he’d known that early on. But to hear her say it aloud made it sound like she had been just the slightest bit upset about that.

Or maybe this was just what wishful thinking felt like.

 _You sound almost_ afraid _that I had died. You would have lost your punching bag, that’s for sure_. “Yes, but you stopped that from happening.”

She looked _so_ uncomfortable standing there and perhaps showing just the slightest bit of emotion past contempt. Her feet scuffed at the floor, a thin puddle shining from the oil on the floor at her feet, the remnants of her little attack on the magister. “You don’t get it,” she muttered, a motley blush spreading under all those freckles

 _You most certainly have a reason for red_ , he caught himself thinking as he looked at her. She had such a lovely face, especially when she wasn’t frowning or glaring at him. Even now, looking at her as he tried to think something to say, he couldn’t help what he noticed.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked softly.

She looked at him and the hand gripping her scarf moved to her cheek and scratched lightly. It loosened enough for him to see the birthmark on her collarbone, the same one he had noticed the night before. He mimicked the action and she flushed even harder as his gloves rasped over the almost-beard on his face. Bringing her hand up to her scar and pressing lightly, she turned away. “No,” she said flatly.

 _That’s a lie._ “Are you sure?”

“Stop prying,” she snapped, storming past him.

She was halfway to hitting her head on the chandelier when he called out that Josephine wanted to see her. She stopped and nodded her head once before going up the stairs, leaving him there with Alexius lying on the floor in a heap.

Cullen glanced at the magister and found him looking at him. Cullen made a noise in the back of his throat, scowling at the prisoner. There was the distinct taste of _disgust_ in his mouth upon meeting his gaze, but it eased as Alexius closed his eyes and shifted towards the wall. There didn’t seem to be anything left in the man for the Herald to torture.

On his way out of the dungeon, he cursed as he hit his head against the chandelier again. Through the pain as he stomped up the stairs, he realized he’d forgotten to ask her how she had slept.

 _Perhaps that was why she was so withdrawn?_ he thought anxiously, peering around at the door to Josephine’s office. He could hear yelling inside and jumped when the door opened suddenly, stepping aside as an orlesian stalked past. Cullen kept his face straight until the man and his masque were out of sight, letting a small smile out when the door to the room slammed shut and the yelling resumed. _Or perhaps she was saving her ire._

He went to his office after that, anxious and eager for something to do. It might have been the recruits’ day off, but it didn’t stop the inactivity from making his skin crawl. That old lyrium kit in his desk didn’t make it easier, his bones aching just from the proximity. The headache behind his eyes only grew worse as the day pressed on, and by supper, Cassandra had dinner and a healer brought to him.

He sent the healer away, knowing there really wasn’t anything she could do. She gave him willowbark and elfroot to help with the pain and the welt on his head, did he get that training with the recruits? _Something like that_ , he’d said, taking them from her and asking she see to the refugees still pouring in. Surely they needed her more than he did.

Still, the willowbark and elfroot helped enough to get him to sleep, two nightmares rearing up behind his eyes, old and distinct. The soft sounds of claws clicking on a cold stone floor bled through those built memories of temptation and the death of his good friends. The other was that city slipping through his fingers and falling into the ocean, those weeping statues screaming as the city finally shuddered and crumbled for the last time.

Then those other dreams came, and when he woke up he could remember them just a bit more clearly than he had the day before. _Distinctly red_ again, the dreams of her good, better than they probably should have been. They weren’t even real things, just feelings his overheated mind managed to concoct in face of the night terrors. They were all _her_ , feelings of safety and the want for something more.

The fact that they were most certainly _just_ dreams didn’t stop him from relishing them and actually start looking forward to sleeping. It didn’t matter that they were far too few and between, or that they were just blurry things while the nightmares were sharper than steel. She was _right now_ , the entire Inquisition too recent for those darker parts of his head to know them enough to hurt him with them. The red hair, the sharp eyes, the oddly shaped birthmark on her collarbone were all _safe_ , too new for the demons to know her shape.

It made seeing her horrible, though, but nervousness clawed at him when she went off or didn’t eat or looked like she hadn’t slept. It felt _awful_ , the entire thing making his skin crawl. The imbalance he felt between them ached terribly, and even though thinking of her as a mage had dimmed in his head until it hadn’t _truly_ mattered to him, _oh_ , did he know it mattered to her.

It was written in the footprints she left behind in the snow as she avoided him, in the way she refused to look at him in meetings the remaining two days before she was to leave. It frustrated him in ways he couldn’t quite place, the unsettled feeling in his gut only getting worse until he took it out on a practice dummy, limbs aching from the exertion, but head feeling clearer than it had since he’d first met the Herald in the War Room after the Temple had exploded.

 _I’ll find her and see how she’s feeling,_ he _promised_ himself as he rinsed himself off in the washroom. _Apologize for prying, see if her burns are better,_ anything _to just get her out my head._

It was only after dinner had been cleared that he got a chance to look for her, having found she’d skipped the meal entirely. He left the hall quickly, not particularly caring who saw him fretting over it. _Honestly_ , he wished he cared more that he felt nearly sick when she was near but good things rarely came into his life. Even if the idea of acting on anything made him more nervous than he could stand, looking out for her was alright. Underneath all the anger and malice, he’d managed to convince himself that she actually cared about what he thought. Reading her was difficult, but the way she had relaxed in his presence spoke more than her thin jibes did.

“Varric, have you seen the Herald?” he asked, spotting the dwarf by a firepit.

He turned, shadows dancing over his form as he saw Cullen. A grin broke on his face, familiar and Cullen groaned at it. _That look always means my life is about to get harder._

He waited for Cullen to finish walking over before answering. “I saw Rabbit hop by a few minutes ago.”

“Rabbit,” Cullen repeated shortly. _How clever_.

“Well, it was originally _Freckles,_ but she threatened to freeze my stones off if I called her that again.” He opened his hands in front of himself and shrugged. “So Rabbit it is.”

Cullen crossed his arms over his chest and looked sideways at Varric, amusement dancing around the edges of his lips. “I take it she has yet to hear your new nickname?”

“Maker, of _course_. If she heard it she’d probably kill me,” he said with a chuckle.

 _She would definitely go through with it, too._ “Freckles is obvious, but why Rabbit?”

“She gets mad when I call her Clara and “Herald” just feels too big,” the dwarf said, his grin growing even wider. He brought his hands up to his head and bent his index fingers, imitating bunny ears. “Plus, she’s a little off her rocker.”

“Your usual band in Kirkwall wasn’t exactly well put together, dwarf,” Cullen said dryly as he looked down at him.

He put his hands up in defense. “Hey, excuse me if I’ve had my fill of crazy mages.”

“There’s a difference between associating with three known apostates, one of which was a blood mage and another an abomination, and working with someone like her.” Cullen pressed his fingers into his temple, the right one throbbing painfully.

“You don’t spend as much time with her as I do, Curly,” he said smartly. “I asked her why she brought me to Redcliffe and she said it was because she wanted to toss me into Lake Calenhad to see if I’d float.”

Cullen felt the smile twitching at the corners of his lips, just picturing the whole exchange. He coughed, pushing the amusement away. “Any particular reason she said that?”

Varric looked surprisingly sheepish, something Cullen was willing to put money on that Varric didn’t seem often. “I _might_ have asked her that after she nearly drove that mage boy there to tears. In my defense, what she said had seemed relatively uncalled for.”

“A mage boy?” Cullen asked, brows furrowing. He somewhat recalled something Blackwall had mentioned when he'd spoken of what had happened, but it hadn’t exactly been _top priority_ at the time.

“Sister Nightingale knows more about it than I do,” Varric replied dismissively. “Something that had happened during the Blight, shambling corpses, apostate blood mages, possessed children, I don’t know. Sounds like a normal Tuesday in Kirkwall, if you ask me."

“Arl Teagan’s nephew?” Cullen asked, surprised.

“That’s the one.”

“And what did she say?”

Varric gave a short chuckle, turning away back towards the firepit. “Take a guess, Curly.”

 _What_ could _she say?_ “Just tell me where she went,” he said brusquely, desire to find where she had gone even stronger than before.

He pointed behind him towards the lake. “By the dock, I think. I didn’t exactly ask her.”

Cullen nodded at Varric and left for the docks. The steps were slippery, a light dusting of snow swirling in the darkening air. Narrowly avoiding falling down the stairs and breaking his back, he stopped as he spotted fresh footprints moving back the blacksmithy.

They led to the Herald, her sitting cross-legged on the wooden pier. She was perched there quietly with her back to him, hair almost black in the green light from the Breach. His heart softened when he saw her, nervous anxiety filtering out as she turned something over in her lap that he couldn’t see.

Her back tensed when he took a few steps closer.

“I was looking for you!” he called ahead of himself, though by the way the air tightened, she knew it was him standing there.

She let go of her magic when he spoke, but didn’t turn. “I wasn’t hiding,” she said, though the words sounded like a lie.

“We missed you at dinner.” He came closer and stood awkwardly behind her, hands gripping at the pommel of his sword to stop the shaking.

“Cassandra already yelled at me for not eating,” she said calmly. “Don’t waste your breath.”

“Actually,” he started. “I came here completely out of my own will.”

She twisted to face him and cocked her head to the side. “Fine. What for, then?”

Nerves struck him suddenly and his palms felt sweaty under his gloves. “I just wanted to ask how your hands were feeling,” he managed, prying his fingers off his sword and forcing them to stay still.

“They’re fine now.” She stood and held something between her hands. The light sound of paper ruffling drifted over to him and he identified it as a book.

“You’ll be ready to move out tomorrow?”

“You don’t have to check up on me,” she said, voice tinged with resentment. “I can take care of myself.”

“It doesn’t hurt to have others care,” he pointed out.

She took a breath and blew it all out in a rush, glancing away at the frozen lake. “Let’s be honest, you don’t really,” she said. Resignation rang behind her words.

Shock held him for a moment before he collected himself. “Excuse me?”

She faced him and rolled her eyes. “You’re doing this to make me feel better, or because Cassandra made you.”

“Actually, I _do_ care,” he said, frustration rising and soon giving way to anger. “I wanted you to feel safe here and maybe _not_ like you _had_ to stay.”

“I don’t have a choice!” she snapped, anger gripping her. She seemed relieved at the familiarity. “I leave, I get hunted by Templars and zealots. I stay and I’m still surrounded, but at least I’m fed and not threatened with death constantly.”

He softened after her words had faded out of the air. She was flushed in the dark, green glow highlighting the air behind her, making the swirling snow glitter sickly. Guilt and affection sprang up and he feared he was just going to die right there from the combination, so sick did he feel from it. _Maker_ was it worse than ever, a well of emotions that he wasn’t used to dealing with bubbling right under his skin. She stared at him, her face slipping into something that might have been guilt, had the lighting been different.

“No one here ever meant for you to feel that way,” he murmured, hands itching to reach out and pull that scarf down so he could see that birthmark again. It felt like an anchor to him, something his dreams and memories could never perfectly replicate. The pattern of her freckles, the way her bangs fell in front of her face, her suspicious eyes, they were all different behind his eyelids.

“No, I get it,” she murmured after a painful moment, just like she had those few nights ago as he’d fumbled with his words and personal revelations. “You’re honest.”

The air felt like syrup, thick and awkward. It wasn’t tense and she seemed calmer than she probably should have been, considering she lived her life in a constant emotional high tide. Even so, he cleared his throat and forced the awkwardness aside.

“How long will you be gone for?” he asked, focusing on the green lights in her hair instead of the way his heart thumped under his breastplate.

“The scouts say it should be a month, round trip,” she said quietly. She looked far away, fingers pressing hard into the scar over her eye. He felt the urge to grab her hand, but he pressed it away in favor of perhaps not risking her ripping it off.

“A _month?”_ he asked, startled at the amount of time. An entire month of worrying and wishing he didn’t worry and then loving the way this _infatuation_ made him feel. Everything he felt threatened to bubble up and spill out right then, tongue two steps away from telling her--

“Commander?” a soldier asked from behind him.

Cullen felt the corner of his mouth twitch as he took a deep breath and turned. “Yes?” he asked stiffly, dragging a hand down his face.

The recruit looked behind him at the Herald, distracted until Cullen cleared his throat. “Seeker Pentaghast needs you to send her the roster for the march tomorrow morning,” he said quickly. He nodded at the Herald, unbalanced and almost tripping. “Herald!”

She didn’t nod back and Cullen took pity on the poor man. He said he’d be off in a minute, turned back to the Herald and apologized for having to go. She waved him off, not seeming too broken up about it. Her dismissal stuck him harder than it probably should have.

The soldier led him away from the docks, their feet crunching in the fresh layer of snow. Still standing by the firepit, Cullen spotted him.

“I expected better from you,” Cullen whispered quickly as he passed the dwarf. He stopped for a moment, thinking he would enjoy rubbing it in just a bit more. “Freckles is a terribly common nickname.”

Varric groaned, face written with shame and indignation. “That one _hurt_ , Curly,” he said, but he seemed to bounce back quickly. “It’s shameful how long it took me to think of Rabbit, though, you’re right.”

“Perhaps you’re losing your touch,” Cullen suggested, indulging himself just a bit in smug satisfaction. The messenger leading him reminded him they had a meeting to make. Cullen nodded at him but turned back to the dwarf. _“Unthink_ Rabbit, Varric.”

“Fine, but you’re no fun,” Varric said with a dramatic sigh.

“And don’t think of something _else!_ ” he called as he walked away. “Do you hear me?”

“Clear as crystal, Curly!”

* * *

 

They left quickly the next morning, rushing to make leaving at dawn and failing. Everything was botched, from the supplies to the number of soldiers sent. Cullen's head felt like it was in a fog, stomach sick and skin pale as saw them off. Cassandra asked him to write and to take care of himself. The Herald said he looked like a corpse and to try to look less like something pulled from the bottom of the lake when they returned. He took it as concern, the words as kind as anything else she’d said.

He tried, _really_ tried to squeeze her out of the back of his mind, but it was nearly impossible. It was a month of his dreams bleeding red for her and horrible nightmares that left him more tired when he awoke. His joints ached and he took to beating the practice dummies to stave off the stiffness. It was all restless nightmares and warm dreams that left him feeling drained when he awoke, the pit in his gut unwanted but wholly deserved. This all felt like more retribution exacted on him for a decade of bad decisions and vision tinted with cruelty and mistrust. She hated him, it seemed, but he was certain he felt anything but.

Reports came back the entire month the party was gone, more mages trickling in the join the Grand Enchanter as they amassed a force large enough to seal the Breach. The Mire was horrible, everyone had contracted a fever the first day, but had fully recovered by the fourth. They had found a few statuettes held by the dead scouts they’d encountered and buried them on their behalf. The mud had arms in all senses, sucking the boots off of everyone present while the undead reached up and hungrily tugged everyone under the bog.

And of _course_ they burned easily. It felt like something divine when he read of the Herald’s anger and inability in the face of true danger. Cassandra had taken to carrying fire grenades to deal with the undead and had advised the Herald to do the same. She had rejected the suggestion and as a result had been pulled under the water and nearly drowned four times before they had found the missing soldiers and killed the Avvar warlord. Cassandra had been crushed thoroughly and Sera had been feathered, but otherwise they were unharmed.

The party returned from the Fallow Mire smelling like death and looking even worse. They were all bedraggled, train weighed down by the effects from the bodies they had pulled from the Mire and those that had not been lucky enough to see the Herald’s arrival. Cassandra’s arm was still bound in a cast, and Sera looked like a cat that had been bathed, while Dorian appeared distinctly _discontent_. The only one who seemed fine was the massive Avvar that accompanied them.

The Herald herself was perhaps the worst, though there didn’t appear to be any new damage to her. She was her usual scowling self, angry with hair that looked orange with the sun setting behind her. The sight of that comforted him more than he had thought it would.

He helped them dismount and unload everything, wisely avoiding offering Cassandra a hand and watching as a green recruit offered the Seeker his assistance. The fire in Cassandra was impressive and terrifying, always there and burning brightly with everything she said. It was right there, too, as she told the recruit that he had better things to do than aid someone who _clearly_ was not in need of assistance. Better things to do indeed; the boy hopped off like a frightened rabbit, straight into where the Herald was bringing her modest satchel off of her horse. Somehow, Clara’s icy anger was even more terrifying than Cassandra’s sharp words and piercing looks had been.

The Seeker was sent to Adan the moment Josephine spotted her with the splint holding her arm together. Rather than try to fight Josephine, a battle she would surely lose to her clever tongue, she went and left the rest of the party to drag everything away. Spotting the Herald leaving the party as well with her satchel set something off in the Commander, his gut clenching in apprehension and the hope that she wasn’t trying to run. The want for her to feel _safe_ here was desperate and if she ran it would compromise any gentleness she received from anyone.

The snow crunched loudly under his feet as he followed her, waffling between being as loud as possible so she knew he was there and being quiet so she wouldn’t get even more suspicious. Nothing ever seemed to work properly around her, and she called to him as soon as he had crept into the clearing by the dilapidated shack she was in.

“You can stop creeping in the brush, Commander,” she said flatly.

He flinched at having been noticed so easily, though it was strange that everything wasn’t as tight as it had been every other time he was alone with her. The absence of her fear both relieved him and piqued his anxiety. It was nice to not have her on edge but if she wasn’t readying herself for something, then she was certainly planning something _else._

Peering around the tree he had been behind, he saw she hadn’t even bothered to look up from digging through her bag. The snow was piled up in a huge drift on the side of the shack, her shadow casting blue and long over the glittering face of it. “I was… curious as to where you were going so soon after arriving,” he said, voice just a shade of defensive. _I haven’t seen you in a month and it’s been burning me alive._

She stood up and grasped the staff behind her back. It was a matte red, the dragon spread open at the top shining dully in the evening light. “It’s none of your business.”

He watched her for a moment, looking at the small pile of kindling she had placed in a spot she had cleared in the snow. “Are you making a campfire?” he asked, head turning sideways as he spotted the chunks of pyralphite peeking out from the dry brush.

She turned to look at him, a few pieces of hair out of her tight bun and _Maker_ did she look lovely with the sun setting heavy behind her. Even with a scowl on her face.

“That’s the idea,” she said after a moment. She turned back to her small pile of twigs and backed away a bit, the air pulling ever so slightly with her.

The air tightened sharply and then released, crackled a bit as she snapped her fingers at the tips of the dragon’s wings. She let out a shout of frustration and stamped her foot, cursing as she tried again and was rewarded with only a slight wink of light before it faded to smoke.

 _She’s practicing her magic_ , he realised with a start. Every report that had come back had mentioned her ineptitude for fire spells and the ensuing rage she had inflicted on the surroundings. The Fallow Mire had been no different and it felt like _right there_ he understood her just a bit more. She wanted security, ability, needed to prove that life in the Circle hadn’t left her too little to live by. He felt it too, he _got_ it, was tugging at a different set of strings held by the same hand.

“We have flint you could use,” he offered, failing at something else to say as she unsuccessfully tried for a third time.

“I don’t _need it_ ,” she snarled. The staff made a dull _whump_ as it fell from her hand and landed in the snow. Her head snapped around to look at him, eyes piercing as the air pulled so closely Cullen could barely breathe in it.

He stepped back, a pang of sudden fear pricking at the palms of his hands. The back of his head was screaming, yelling, old training still shining at the forefront of his mind. _Grab your sword, Silence her,_ protect _yourself_. The fear _of_ her and the fear _for_ her were dueling in his head, fighting as he stepped back again and she stepped forward. His temples started throbbing at all of it.

She stopped approaching until she was perhaps six feet from him, the air dangerously close and thick over his exposed skin. Her gaze flicked down at his feet, pale blue eyes taking in his stance, then zeroed in on his own. “Are you afraid, Commander?” she asked quietly. The idea of it seemed to amuse her.

“No,” he said clearly, voice solid and resolute. It wasn’t a lie or the truth; he was afraid of small rooms and relapse, of blood mages and the death of his family. He was afraid of avalanches and earthquakes and abominations, but he didn’t live in constant fear of any of them. And facing down the Herald, even with the way she practically sucked the air out of his lungs from her sheer power over their proximity, he wasn’t afraid. It wasn’t that he _trusted_ her, he couldn’t think of a reason to, but he believed her words were more hollow than a discarded helm.

The air snapped back when she let it go, his breath coming out in a rush as it eased around him. She turned away and cleared her throat a few times before telling him to leave. Her voice was distinctly soft, mannerisms stunted as she bent and lifted her staff from the snow.

It felt like his heart was squeezed right then, his chest tightening as pity gave way to some kind of affection. His hands itched to reach out, give her a reassuring touch he was sure would only set her off. Distaste flashed in her eyes when she looked at him, the sight of it chased by the sharpness she held in them otherwise. It was sticking to him all wrong, pulled at him like her magic did, like the past held onto his feet, like the Order did, all wrapped around his arms. His stomach dropped further in disappointment than he had thought it would. A notable oversight on his part.

Then she glanced away at a ridge of snow, a blush spreading out under her freckles. He wished her scarf wasn’t wrapped so tightly around her right then. He still couldn’t quite picture what her birthmark looked like, the pattern of freckles was still hazy in his head. It had just been something to focus on before, pull those dreams away from the nightmares but it felt like more now. It was something about her he noticed, like how her feet shuffled anxiously, the way she held the collar of her shirt, covered the scar on her face. That last one felt like it burned in head, the want to ask where it came from getting beaten down by the sick feeling telling him he already knew the answer.

“It’s good you’re cleanshaven,” she said briskly but her eyes were still on the snowdrift. “You looked like a wildman before we left.”

He rubbed at his face in surprise, both that she had noticed and that it had been shocking enough for her to comment. “I didn’t know you took such offense to my facial hair,” he said hesitantly. The words sounded more like a challenge when he said them than they had in his head and it set his gut to clenching in fear. _Please don’t get worse on me._

Her eyes snapped back to him, the color so unbelievably _blue_ for a moment he had to blink it away until they were pale like the ice on the lake. “That’s _not_ what I meant.”

“No, it’s fine, I understand,” he said, and it was only half untrue. “You’re…” _Concerned? Maker no, she’ll yell at you. Observant? Glad?_ “Sharp.”

She snorted but it might have been a laugh, he wasn’t quite sure; he’d had yet to even see her crack a smile. “You’re very honest, Commander.”

“It’s the best policy.”

The corner of her mouth twitched up and he grinned at seeing it. It was a small thing, and it winked out too quickly for him to be sure if it had really existed, but it was a step. _Progress_ , he reminded himself. _It doesn’t matter how you feel, making her more at ease will make it easier to work together._ Even if he _knew_ it was more than professional interest, _knew_ he cared more than a colleague should, _knew_ she would always look at him and see that silverite Sword of Mercy flashing on his chest no matter what, for all of his personal failures, getting her to let go of her magic when he was near made his gut flutter. Either infatuation or relief, it was good enough for him.

“It’s not something I’m used to from a Templar,” she said, posture stiffening. It was like she was reminding herself of it, had to keep from forgetting it. He deserved that, he supposed, but it didn’t mean he had to like it.

“I’m _not_ a Templar,” he said firmly, one hand cutting through the air as the other gripped at his sword pommel, temples beginning to ache. The words felt tired in his mouth.

Surprisingly, she didn’t flinch back or pull the air together. Instead she turned with another snort, dragon staff winking menacingly in the evening light. “And I’m not a Circle mage anymore, but I still remember my training.” She paused for a moment as she tried to light the staff again, a flame sparking up before guttering out impressively. As if emboldened by his silence and her personal inability, she stomped her foot and cursed, her words sharp like knives as she tried to aim them somewhere they would hurt. “I _also_ remember my Harrowing and the Knight-Commander who reassured me he would do the right thing if I failed. You can clean the blade, Commander, but the smell still lingers.”

He soaked in what she said for a single, shocked moment before he took a breath to answer. What he was going to say, even he wasn’t quite sure of, but it had to be _something_. She didn’t give him the option, however, and she just sighed at him, narrow shoulders slumping and form silhouetted in the orange sun.

“Just _go_ ,” she said and she sounded so immensely _tired_ his heart clenched again for her. Affection this time, no pity, just concern and the desire for an emotional connection past toleration.

The snow crunched under his boots as he left, figuring no answer would be better than just listening to her request for distance. Not even an hour in her presence and he had managed to wax so many emotions for her he couldn’t help but feel worn out. It was better than usual, though, and even as he left, listening to her repeatedly try to light that small campfire and fail, he weighed the way the air felt around her now than it had when they first met. Below her disdain was acceptance, he was sure. At least she didn’t seem so afraid, anymore. That was enough, he supposed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy this took way too long to get out. My life has been kinda hectic but it settled mostly, i have a new job now and i updated another fic of mine, but I've been busting myself to put this out. I'm sorry it's probably terrible too, it's like 5 am and I just really needed to post it. This update is a monster and i'm sincerely sorry for that, too.
> 
> As always, my writing blog is [jellopunch.](http://jellopunch.tumblr.com/)


	6. Honest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And he wanted to _say it. Please don’t be afraid, you don’t have to be._ Not of him, not when he dreamt of the feeling of her soft skin or of kissing her, her beautiful smile wide and blue eyes half shut as she kissed him back. Not when all he ever seemed to think about was a way to put her at ease, get more and hear her speak to him, _notice_ that he _honestly_ cared.

Dinner in the tavern that night was loud and crowded. The press of bodies was too tight, the air filled with the sensations of too many people stuffed into a small space driving the Commander out into the fresh air by the apothecary. The snow smelled like elfroot and spindleweed out there, the wood of the huts having taken on the sweet smell of embrium from the dried clumps of it hung about. It was calmer, quieter, better than the overcrowded tavern with the low roof.

And it figures she would have been avoiding the throng of people out here as well.

“Oh, _fuck me_ ,” she hissed from her snowdrift. He just stared at her, body half hidden by the mounds of snow. There was a heavy flush on her face and her hands were colorlessness as they clutched at the bottle in her grasp. “Can’t I get a moment’s peace?”

“Are you getting drunk out here?” he asked, shocked, though he didn’t really know _why_ he was. He’d spent enough time observing her, he knew how most of her meals were less than solid. He glanced around for other signs of life, but it was just her and the spikes of artificial ice she’d conjured and he felt _upset_ , of all things. _“Alone?”_

The snow crunched as she pushed away from it, the fine crackle of magic sharp in the air as she stumbled and then righted herself against the side of the apothecary. “I was _trying_ to, before you showed up.”

 _You're making a fool of yourself and it's a pity_ I'm _the only one here to see it._ "You just don't care, do you?" he snapped, anger mounting so quickly it was almost frightening.

She looked at him for a moment, eyes wide with surprise before the blush on her face deepened. Her pretty face twisted, eyes narrowing and teeth baring in an ugly grimace. "Just say what you mean, then, tell me how you _honestly_ feel."

And _honestly_. That word felt like lyrium had the first time he’d had it. It was a great thing to be called and a terrible thing to want, _honesty_ never being anything less than he could ever give. It felt expected of him, the idea to lie never coming to him and damn if that was the part of him she wasn’t going to pull out and hold onto. _Honest_ , she had always called him, like it was the only quality about him she could pick out that wasn't Templar. Everything she said felt like it was meant to hurt, pressed in hard right between the joints in his armor, under his breastplate, the ridge of his gorget, but it had just glanced away. He'd heard it all before, been that bad thing she'd said he was, _endured_ more than her petty words and shallow remarks could ever put him through.

But as with being a Templar comes, you're never really called _honest_.

"Just please..." he started, anger drained and chest heavy because he had too many layers of plate for her to be able to get under so easily. Please what? Stop lying in the snow and drinking her apprehension away? "Get up, I'll have Cassandra take you to your room."

Maker bless him for doing something to elicit emotion other than disdain from her. "No, no no no no!" she said quickly, pushing away from the shack and dropping the bottle, the remaining wine spilling out heavy and purple on the snow. Clara cleared her throat and looked down at the growing stain, embarrassed. "Not Cassandra. Dorian."

He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her sideways. "Dorian is probably drunker than you are right now."

"Solas then," she said. Her hand gripped the side of the shack for support and his chest tightened with a strange kind of pity. "Please, just not Cassandra."

"Is there a reason?" he asked quietly, words just a bit louder than the gentle sound of the summer snows.

Clara swallowed thickly, face already too flushed to blush even harder. Her hand went to her face and covered the left half of it while her eyes stared at the wine-soaked snow. "She'll be disappointed."

 _Maker's breath, you_ care. "You're worried what she thinks of you."

"I'm _not_ ," she snapped immediately. Then she sighed and bent over, a shaky hand reaching out for the empty bottle. "She's overbearing," she said once she'd straightened up.

"She worries about you," he said instead of _She can't believe you're our only hope._ It was unnecessary and he _honestly_ found that he didn't hold much apprehension for her being the Herald. The Maker worked in mysterious ways, and perhaps being the Herald was for her own personal saving just as much as it was to put the sky back together.

"When I first met her in the Valley, she let me have a stave because she said she couldn't protect me," she said slowly, turning the bottle over in her hands. "Now all she feels like is a shield."

Cullen watched her there, clearly not standing out in the snow with him anymore. The way she'd said it, it was like she hadn't expected Cassandra to be the way she was. Odd, considering how sure the Herald seemed of everything else.

"I'll get Solas," Cullen said softly because _what else_ could he say to her then? She didn't answer and he turned away, wonderful infatuation giving way to concern in his gut. He wanted something _else_ , not more, just something different than this right here.

Looking back at her, he took a deep breath in the cold air. "Does the mark hurt?" he asked quickly, pushing the words out before he could stuff them back down.

“Excuse me?” she asked, face surprised in the green night.

“On your hand,” he went on, turning back fully. He held up his hand and made a fist, opening it palm side up, her eyes following the motion. “Does it ever hurt?”

She blinked at his hand, swallowing thickly before her gaze flicked to his face. They both colored instantly, looking away as embarrassment cut through the five feet between them. He rubbed at the back of his neck, hands shaking with snapped emotion and he just _wished_ he hadn’t said anything. It was hell being like this, _wanting_ to speak and then getting nothing but an increasing headache and distance--

“Sometimes,” she said quietly. He turned back and found her looking down at her left hand, the other pulling her scarf more tightly around her neck while the bottle was caught awkwardly between her arm and coat. Under the ripples of shiny red fabric he could almost pick out where her birthmark would be, figured at the pattern the spray of freckles over her skin would make. That night standing under the Breach was bright in his head, warm with affection and he _wanted_ to stop noticing her and the way her hair glowed orange in the sunlight and the way she didn’t eat and the way she said less than she wanted to.

“Like when?” he asked softly, voice subdued and soaking into the summoned snow. As horrible as _noticing_ her was, to simply _not_ felt impossible.

“When I close rifts.” Her voice was short and clipped in the silent air. If Cullen listened closely enough it felt as if the Breach was yanking on the air like magic did, a slight tremor that he felt inside his ears. With the mark, the Herald probably did too. “Red lyrium makes it throb,” she added, closing her hand in a tight fist and looking at him. A slight green light was coming out from between her clenched fingers, a light crackling accompanying the _aching_ way the air rippled.

“Can you make it flare like that?” He swallowed the sudden thickness in his throat, unnerved by the way she looked right at him. It felt like she was seeing his entire face at once, sharp, pale eyes taking in the stubble, a few unruly curls that had escaped the style, more lines than he liked to acknowledge were there.

Her eyes settled on his and a small smile twitched at the corners of her lips, the expression pulling up her entire face. “Sometimes,” she said again, slight smile coy. Perhaps it was because she was halfway to drunk, but it felt like she had forgotten she was supposed to hate him. The reprieve was nice.

 _Maker’s breath, she’s_ smiling _at you._ “What about when you use magic?” he asked, returning the smile and crossing his arms.

The grin on her face slid away, and he found he missed it. It was pretty, a lovely expression that made it seem like she wasn’t so angry. “I don’t notice it when I cast.”

Cullen watched her for a moment, half grateful she wasn’t smiling anymore because he was positive his knees would get weak. Horrible infatuation had always made him feel like a stuttering fool, uncertainty chasing everything he felt and everything he _wished_ she’d felt for him.

She was staring towards the snow at her feet now, clenching and unclenching her hand as the green glow flared up slightly and then faded away. It tugged the air wrong, pulled it sideways and dragged it across his skin. After perhaps three moments of hesitation, he took a few steps forward, acutely aware of the sound his boots made as they punched heavy holes in the snow. There were only about two feet between them then and his chest felt like it was _aching_. It was for her and this ridiculous _crush_ , out of place in his head. Affection for her didn’t belong there, sitting right behind his eyes and coloring that view of her he had every time he blinked. He _knew_  what she was like, the cruelty and the bitterness frosting over her skin.

But then again he _knew_ what she was like, the way she struggled with the weight of her newfound title and the hands that grasped at her, fists tight as they held on and wanted _more_.

He reached out, a passing impulse and the want to touch her, but he was stopped short of her sleeve.

“Clara?” Cullen heard Solas call ahead of himself. He jumped at the suddenness of the sound, heart hammering in his chest as he backed off from the Herald. “I felt the Veil shift, is there something wrong with the mark again?”

Cullen held the hand that been about to touch her in the air for a moment before he clenched it in a tight fist. “We’re fine, Solas!” he called to the mage, voice louder than he had intended. He cleared his throat, mouth suddenly dry as his temples throbbed.

The elf rounded the corner to the small circle of shacks. “You’re with the Commander?” he asked softly, taking in the scene before him. His mouth quirked into a strange sort of smile that reminded Cullen far too much of Hawke.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Clara snapped immediately, throwing in a sideways look at the Commander for good measure. “I was by myself and he found me.”

Solas approached and reached for the bottle in her grip. After a moment, she handed it over with a distinct look of shame on her face. As he examined it, the nagging sense that he shouldn’t be seeing this crept up the back of Cullen’s neck and shivered over his scalp.

"I was about to get you," Cullen said. It was an effort to diffuse the sudden awkwardness and maybe feel something like the way his chest had just been fluttering when he'd reached for Clara.

"I felt the mark," Solas said mildly as he turned the wine bottle in his fingers. He looked away from it and saw the purple snow. "I was on my way to bed anyway, and I'll see she gets to hers safely."

 _Remember not to let the others in the compound see her. Make sure she doesn't trip and suffocate in a snowdrift._ "Good, that's... Good," he said instead, though, because he _knew_ he cared far more than he should. “It’s late, and we have a council in the morning to determine what to do about the Breach.”

Clara sighed. “Right, we have enough mages for that now, don’t we?”

Cullen looked at her for a moment, expression feeling too soft and open on his face. The energy to press it down didn’t come to him, but it didn’t matter; it was dark and she was going to see whatever she wanted in his face, regardless of what was actually there. “We’ll discuss it in the meeting.” He swallowed, looking around for a moment, wanting something else to say but coming up short. “Goodnight then, Herald.”

“Yes, goodnight,” she murmured, eyes cast towards a snowdrift.

Cullen held his breath for a second before blowing it out. There was no use just staring at her while she toed the snow, _expecting_ something. Solas was to her right, his thin feet bare in the snow as he stood, waiting for the Commander to leave. Perhaps the elf knew how his very presence set the Herald off, or maybe he wanted to shame her in only that certain way he seemed to be capable of and didn’t want him there to see it.

“In the morning, then,” Cullen said softly to Clara, inclining his head towards Solas.

He nodded back while she stared and Cullen turned off, heavy boots sinking into the snow. The want to just lie in the snow came up quickly, but practicality beat it down. Trying to cool his embarrassment with the snow would only make him sick.

He managed the get about ten feet away before she called out to him. Her footsteps were small and fast, prints in the snow lighter than his. He turned in time to see her stumble a bit, his hand going out to steady her before he _remembered_ how she recoiled from his touch.

Strangely enough, she didn't immediately jerk away, but she did tense up. The air sucked in tightly from her innate fear, releasing smoothly as soon as he took his hand off of her arm. Then he was left standing there with his conscious screaming as he tried to shove down the blush, the way his gut clenched, the terrible nervousness that wracked his body every time she was near. His palm still felt warm from her skin, even through his glove. It was an unexpected thing to notice.

He started to stammer out a rushed apology-- _But for what? Stopping her from landing face-down in the snow?_ \--but she beat him to it.

“Thank you,” she forced out, eyes staring directly at the hook on the front of his gorget. It was probably as close to eye-contact as he was going to get right now.

He took a step back, an attempt to make her feel less anxious and to maybe stop her from noticing the way he started sweating or how his hands shook. “For?”

 _“Asking,”_ she said breathlessly, her hand shoving the hair out of her face before trailing lightly over the scar down her cheek. “No one ever does.” Her eyes flicked over to the path he’d been about to take away from the apothecary, breath misting less than it should’ve in the cold air as she sighed.

He considered her for a moment, folding his arms over his chest. “It’s quite the topic amongst all the priests and mothers banging our doors down.”

“They just want to gawk at it,” she spat, face twisting with a sneer. She closed her eyes and rubbed her face, looking distinctly _worn out._ “They’ve all declared that it _certainly isn’t divine._ ”

“Still, you’re the Herald,” he said softly, voice warming with compassion for her. “Those were their words, then?”

She snorted, lips twitching into a smile again. Then it spread a bit and her lips pulled back, all big teeth and a bright _grin_.

 _That was a_ laugh, he thought, the corners of his lips pulling up. _She’s the Herald of Andraste and she snorts when she laughs._ It was terrible the way his heart thudded because of her, the nervousness that itched at the bottoms of his feet and made his hands feel large and clumsy.

“Those weren’t their words exactly, but they were close enough,” she murmured, hand fiddling with the ripples of her scarf.

Cullen smiled at her, wondering at how the blush on her face felt, if her skin was warm from the flush or cold from the frozen air. He felt so _soft_ for her right then, such a strange thing but he felt worn out from analyzing it. She was _better_ than she thought, and Maker preserve him because he just wanted _closer_ , acknowledgement and perhaps to know what her lips felt like, pulled up in a pretty smile like they were.

And he _almost_ stepped forward just for that feeling of being closer, but he saw the look of mild amusement Solas was staring at the two of them with. Embarrassment bled heavy under his skin, body far too warm in the snow. He murmured another quiet goodnight to the Herald before turning away and stomping quickly down the cleared path. Rounding the corner of one of the shacks, blessedly out of anyone’s sight, he stopped and leaned against the cool wood of the building. Taking a deep breath, he marveled at the pleasant coldness of the wall against his face.

 _This is going to be terrible,_ he thought, rubbing at his temples with one hand while the other braced his weight against the building. And terrible really was all he could call it.

That night felt like one of the worst yet. It wasn’t sharp nightmares that made his teeth itch or memories that made him sick. It was all red and freckled and _warm_. That was the oddest part, the one that didn’t make sense, but even falling asleep, before the hazy dreams came together into something sharper, he could still remember how warm her skin had felt through his gloves. Long fingers, flushed skin, the unexpected laughter that should’ve sounded annoying but only endeared him far too much. He couldn’t get her _out of his head._

And those dreams, the terrible ones that he didn’t want to stop having, they were all what he had been too hesitant to do, too full of _sense_ to ever do. They were all of getting painfully _close_ , her speaking openly and looking at him, a smile on her lovely face. How soft her skin must have been, the feeling of her scar under his fingertips, her body warm as she _let_ him touch her. There wasn’t fear or tightness in the air and her laugh was the loveliest thing he’d ever heard, he was sure. He _wanted_ her and in those dreams he got her, sharp and red and warm and flushed under his fingertips.

He woke up with the birds the next morning, the crows that stayed in the mountains screaming until he rose. The sun had barely cleared the mountains around the bowl Haven was in, the small window to his room only half-filled with light as it streamed in, thin and pink. He dressed slowly, back aching and far too rested to be sharp. The coin went into his breast pocket again, pressed tightly against him by the plates he strapped on. It was lucky, is _had_ to have been, so it stayed. It helped him remember the face his brother had made as he’d pressed it into his hand, the fear that the other Templars would find it and confiscate it so very real at the time. But they hadn’t, so perhaps he was meant to have it for a reason.

The war council was called after the air outside had warmed a bit, the five of them stuffed into the room and crowded around the table. All they did was talk circles around each other, everyone saying what the others already knew: they had the mages, they had the support, a means to _the_ end. The Breach needed to be sealed, and as if to prove it’s own personal point, the Herald’s mark sputtered weakly, Cullen noticing the way Clara’s face turned with a wince as she flexed and pulled the thing into submission.

They decided that soon was better than later, and it _was_ , what with the way the Breach practically took the air out of the sky. But even though time was of the essence, his heart clenched with sick compassion at the Herald’s tight frown upon hearing the march was happening the next morning. An entire day to prepare and _then what?_

“She’s afraid we’ll send her back to the Circle,” Cassandra murmured to him as the council was cleared. It was just the two of them left in the doorway to the room, watching as the rest of the council broke to see to their preparations.

Cullen looked sideways down at her. “There aren’t Circles left to send her back to.”

Cassandra crossed her arms and continued to stare at the doors to the Chantry, even after the Herald had closed them behind her. “We have to do something with her after the Breach is sealed,” she said, brows furrowed in concentration. “Assuming the Breach _is_ sealed.”

“Why do anything with her?” Cullen asked slowly, rolling his shoulders. An ache had started between his shoulder blades, impossible to flex away. “She should stay here, where she’ll do the most good.”

“She doesn’t want to be here,” she said simply, sighing heavily at the end.

Cullen swallowed down the sudden lump in his throat. It was a stupid thing to feel but he was _upset_. It was partially selfishness to want to keep her close, but it was mostly the desire to do what felt best, what felt _right_. Tossing her out with nowhere to go after she could stop the world from ending didn’t seem like the way the Herald’s tale should end. “I don’t think there’s anywhere she _wants_ to be, Cassandra.”

“She’s not likely to be a danger, so I suppose it doesn’t matter what we do.” She rubbed her forehead and took a moment for herself, voice strained and clipped when she spoke again. “Even so, that’s a matter for later.”

Cassandra left him then to go and speak with Leliana, Cullen standing there for a few seconds before deciding getting out from under the roof would be best. The door to the Chantry closed loud and banging behind him as the sunshine glinting off of the mountains blinded him for nearly a minute. He stopped in his office for a moment, called a page over to run and post the list for that march he’d prepared weeks ago when the mages had come crawling into Haven. After that, there was nothing left. It was the soldiers’ day off and the march was tomorrow. It felt odd to have nothing to do but wait.

He hesitated in his office for a few more minutes before eating some of the bread and cheese he was sure Cassandra had had sent to his office the night before when he’d run from dinner. There were also a few elfroot leaves at the bottom of the basket, for the headaches, he knew. The bread was stale and the cheese tasted like guilt for the Seeker’s concern, but he brushed it off. She was a good friend.

Leaving his office felt like the right thing to do, but standing out in the cold air seemed pointless. He watched the soldiers bicker and fight over the march for tomorrow, many of them scattering when he came closer, afraid of his disappointment to see them arguing. He let them leave, instead content to watch the team for the next day prepare the packs and clean the mounts. Across the way towards the staircase, he spotted the Herald storming towards the group of alchemists stocking the potions chests.

It was clear she was fighting with them, and he could spot the bottles Adan had made for lyrium sickness among the ones she lined up in the snow and pointed to. He half thought about going over and putting a stop to it but Dorian intervened before he could trudge through the snow.

While it appeared to be a valiant effort, she only threw her arms up and sent him away, the mage having no other choice than to escape while his person remained in one piece.

Dorian was almost to the staircase before he turned and spotted the Commander. Cullen could see the wicked grin on his face even from so far away and groaned. _Honestly, right now?_

“Commander!” he called out, waving as he came closer. A staff was in his hand as he used it to pick through the snow, a twisted clump of metal that shined brightly in the shallow sunlight. Onyx, if he wasn’t mistaken.

 _That’s certainly my title,_ he thought dryly before bringing up a hand to wave back. “Don’t you have to prepare for the march?”

Dorian waited until he was next to Cullen to answer, the both of them watching Clara vigorously gesture what she was going to do to the poor alchemist. “She’s not taking me,” he replied, watching her sideways.

“That’s odd,” Cullen said, frowning. “Any particular reason?”

The mage shrugged. “She’s bringing Solas and Cassandra. And the dwarf, for some reason.”

“They were there,” he said immediately. “When the chantry exploded and the Breach was formed.”

“Perhaps out of sentimentality, then?”

Cullen shrugged, not particularly eager to speak of it. Dorian was fine to have around, but today just felt _bad_ , the day before a march always something somber and tense.

“Still though, I’m half glad I’m not accompanying her. She woke up in a terrible mood, it would seem.” Dorian watched her pour one of the potions out and shook his head. “More so than usual, I should say.”

Cullen looked over at her and sighed, remembering her in the snow the night before. Tonight was going to be no different for her, he was sure, except now she was going to find a place where no one would stumble upon her. “She’s not so bad,” he murmured, skin itching with the way her acceptance and freckles had felt in his dreams.

He could feel the way Dorian was looking at him as he watched one of the stable hands try to calm her down. A blush crept up the back of his neck and he crossed his arms tightly over his chest to hide the sudden shakiness in his hands. He prayed that his expression was neutral enough, but he’d never been particularly adept at holding his emotions in check in casual conversation.

"Maker's breath!" Dorian exclaimed in a smug whisper. "You're sweet on her, aren't you Commander?"

Cullen cleared his throat and continued staring at where the Herald was still arguing with now three alchemists. "That's ridiculous, I'm just concerned for her." _Is it really that obvious?_

The shit-eating grin on Dorian's face only grew, Cullen was sure. "There's nothing wrong with a little infatuation, I guess. Though I must say, I don't see the appeal."

 _To be honest, I'm not sure I do either._ "Is she not your type, then?" Cullen asked amicably. Coy word-games frustrated him, but they seemed to be the only way to get a leg up with the mage.

Dorian let out a short laugh, stamping his staff into the snow. "You could say that."

"Too… intense for you?" And was she _anything_ if not intense.

"No, it's the red hair," Dorian said with an exaggerated sigh. "I must say, I'm not a fan."

Cullen turned and looked at him for a moment, at the serene look on his face and the few snowflakes that had yet to melt on his skin. "Fair enough," he replied, looking back. The man could deflect quite impressively.

There was a moment of silence before Dorian let out a small chuckle. “What do you do for fun, Commander?”

Cullen turned the question around in his head. Did he ever doing anything for _fun_? “Nothing,” he grunted, crossing his arms more tightly. “Are you looking for something to do?”

“No, but I don’t think watching the Herald fight over the concentration of elfroot in her potions is actually enjoyable.”

 _Her hair is orange in the sunlight and perhaps she'll smile again._ “Do you have a suggestion, then?”

Dorian scoffed a bit and looked up at him. “I’m not sure what you would qualify as fun. Hence, why I _asked_.”

Cullen stared down at him, back aching and still terribly soft after watching the Herald agonize about sealing the Breach. Then, a grin spread on his face as he recalled the gift Mia had sent him upon joining the Inquisition, sitting in his room under the bed. “Do they teach you how to play chess in Tevinter?”

 

* * *

 

"You've got a clever mind and a clumsy tongue, Commander," Dorian said amicably as he toyed with a piece, the both of them sitting at a spare side table in Cullen’s office. "Terrible combination, really."

Cullen let out a snort, pushing his tower into position to trap Dorian's king. "And I assume you're gifted in both respects, then?"

"More than just gifted, my friend," he replied with a smile. He leaned forward and pushed his remaining lion out of the way, saving the piece but setting himself up for the game.

Cullen shook his head at the folly, a wry smile twisting itself onto his face. "You speak so much I'm surprised your mind can keep up," he said flatly. He moved a chest ahead as a sacrifice, a distraction to placate Dorian.

"Yes, well that's because all you Fereldens don't seem to talk with your mouths." Dorian gave a faux shudder and grimaced. "I've almost been hit too many times to count speaking with anyone here. It's like playing a game of _charades_."

"Perhaps you should try listening instead of thinking of what you're going to say next." _Your words are nice but they don't say much._ He moved his knight around and Dorian’s king’s fate was sealed. “Checkmate.”

The mage’s eyebrows shot up as he leaned forward, examining the board in an effort to find his demise. Cullen sat back, pleased with himself as Dorian leaned away and scoffed, suddenly unaffected by the loss. “Try not to look so pleased with yourself,” he said airily, waving his hand towards the window of Cullen’s office.

“It’s hard not to be,” Cullen replied, grin widening. “You’re terrible at cheating.”

“It wounds me that you would insinuate that _I_ would cheat!” Dorian put a hand over his heart and while he seemed to be doing his best to look offended, his eyes had a terrible glint to them.

Cullen just leaned forward and started putting the pieces away, privately rolling his eyes at the idea that Dorian could _ever_ be considered innocent. “I’ve never seen someone so attached to their towers before.”

“I appreciate fine construction.”

“Perhaps you should be less focused on attacking and more on protecting,” Cullen suggested. He snapped the lid of the box shut and stood, placing it on the edge of his desk.

Dorian stood and stretched, grabbing his staff from where it was propped up on the wall. “I’ve never had the mind for protecting, honestly. A better breaker than a fixer, and all of that.”

 _“Protect and serve,”_ Cullen mumbled to himself, rubbing his hands down his face. “When you’re in charge of men you have to be just as aware of their positions as you are of the enemy. Otherwise you _will_ lose.”

“Is that what they teach you Templars down here?” Dorian asked, moving in front of Cullen’s desk.

“I’m _not_ a Templar,” Cullen snapped immediately, force and _anger_ right there in the back of his voice.

“Certainly not anymore,” Dorian agreed, face smug and arms crossed. “I’m a mage from Tevinter, so I must be a magister, yes?”

Cullen looked at him a moment, taking the time to consider an answer. Dorian’s words always carried something underneath them, a little extra to say what he really wanted when you peeled the pomp and cleverness away.

“It’s different,” Cullen said. He cleared his throat, voice dry. “I left the Order. I can put _down_ my sword.”

“Can you really?” he asked, head cocked. “I can put down my staff but I don’t actually need it.”

 _I don’t need a sword to be dangerous,_ Cullen thought, suddenly sick of it. He knew what Dorian was hedging at and the truth in the words. He’d accepted it already, _remembered_ his training. A sword was something to make it easier, perhaps a bit less personal. “Is there something you’re getting at, Dorian?” he asked, walking around his desk to leave his office.

“Perhaps it’s nothing,” Dorian said, moving so he was standing in the threshold of Cullen’s office. His form blocked the doorway, trapped Cullen in. “But perhaps it’s not different at all. Two sides of the same coin and all of that.”

The coin in Cullen’s pocket felt suddenly heavier, like he was more aware of it. “I have work to see to for the march” he said gruffly, forcing his hands to not reach for his sword to hold. “You’re in my door.”

Dorian glanced around then turned to look at Cullen for a second. “So I am. I have things I should see to as well,” he said before stepping aside.

Cullen stepped out and waited for Dorian to leave before he locked the door behind him. Before leaving, Dorian assured Cullen that he would see to it that Clara didn’t offend the alchemists so badly that they might poison her. The mage left before Cullen was ready with an answer that would both deny any personal stake in the Herald’s safety and express relief that someone would make sure she was alright. Instead he was left there, face a horrible red and guts all twisted up. Maker's _breath_ , he was a grown man and he was reduced to fumbling and blushing because of a woman who couldn’t stand him.

The rest of the day simply _went_. He was called into a few meetings, one of which was to introduce him to the mages they would be bringing to help the Herald. The hall was full of uncomfortable tightness, most of the mages on the defensive just as Clara had been when he’d first met her. Getting back outside was a relief, his skin fitting right again as he breathed in the lack of a ceiling on the sky.

He took dinner in his office and went right to bed afterward, thoughts heavy and the memory of finding the Herald in the snow the night before hard behind his eyes. He just kept _thinking_ about her, turning every facet of every encounter over in his head until he felt almost sick from it, falling asleep and into hazy dreams wrapped around silverite sharp nightmares. Waking up was a relief, even with the way he felt achy as he washed the sweat off of himself and dressed.

They marched down into the Valley, the path well-worn and beaten easily. It took longer than it should’ve to get to the blast site, a week of meandering through the shallow summer snow. A week of nights either filled with sharp nightmares or warm dreams, the both of them leaving him equally dazed and achy in the morning. A week of avoiding the Herald and justifying trudging to her tent every night and then leaving before he had the nerve to ask if she was awake.

And then they found the Breach and he almost threw up from the combined pain in his head and the nausea induced from the red lyrium and magic in the air. After it was stitched shut an iridescent scar left in the sky where it’d ripped open, the party celebrated in the remains of the Valley. Escaping the party, Cullen heard the Herald emptying her stomach behind a clearing of evergreens. He felt for her again in that instant, sick with worry and affection and frustrated that his hands were all but tied.

It got a bit better on the return, another week of the same things he’d already been suffering through. He still went to her tent, sometimes felt a tightness that spoke she knew he was there while others she remained unaware. The courage to go in and speak never came. Perhaps it was the expectancy of tomorrow that let him stop himself, the reassurance that another day to try was only a few hours away. Perhaps he was just a coward and the slightest bit afraid of how he felt for her. Perhaps it was all of it.

When they arrived back at Haven there was already a party underway. Tables had been thrown up and numerous minstrels were out and seeming to be in a battle to out-croon all the others. All of it made Cullen’s head throb, even after the two pints that Bull pressed him into drinking. The beer was watered down, but that didn’t stop nearly everyone in attendance from getting sloppy.

Save the Herald, oddly. He saw her sitting on a bench by the tavern door. Solas had been speaking with her, but the elf left when he saw the Commander approach. She watched him as he came towards her, not standing or offering him to sit when he came to stand in front of her, awkward and flushed in the cold night air.

“How are you feeling?” he asked softly, heart hammering under his breastplate.

She stared up at him for a moment before shrugging. “I’m alright.”

“Your mark doesn’t hurt at all?” His hand came up to rub at the back of his neck, the other reaching for his sword, hovering awkwardly when he remembered he left it in his office.

“Not right now,” she said, flexing her left hand. “It hasn’t hurt since we sealed the Breach.”

 _And the lyrium sickness?_ “Did Adan give you anything to help with the red lyrium?”

She turned away from him, air coming in closely as her face hardened. _Fool thing to ask,_ he thought as he felt her disappointment and frustration at him bringing up her vulnerability. He didn’t know how to say that it wasn’t contempt or fear of failure that he held in her, it was something _else_. He could barely pin down everything he felt for her and around her, but he was certain it wasn’t anything bad. The thought of her being afraid of him stabbed him right through, so much more painful than it should’ve been. It had started as the want to earn trust but it had turned into this _thing_ that just rooted at the base of his skull and made him flushed. She shouldn’t _need_ to be afraid.

And he wanted to _say it_. _Please don’t be afraid, you don’t have to be_. Not of him, not when he dreamt of the feeling of her soft skin or of kissing her, her beautiful smile wide and blue eyes half shut as she kissed him back. Not when all he ever seemed to think about was a way to put her at ease, get more and hear her speak to him, _notice_ that he _honestly_ cared.

But she was, and she jumped up instantly when Cassandra grabbed her to speak. It left a hollow feeling in his gut at how fast she couldn’t be away from him, but he managed to tell himself it was because he hadn’t eaten much lately.

With the party roaring just down in the fire pits, he pressed his face to the cool wood of one of the shacks again, overwhelmed and warm and just the slightest bit ill. Retiring early felt like a wonderful idea right then, and he almost took it when the screaming started.

Spotting the incoming invasion, seeing such a familiar face on the crest of the mountain that made the bowl Haven sat in, he was relieved he hadn’t accepted that third tankard from Bull. The relief soon gave way to something darker, more like _rage_ and that single-minded clarity that only came in battle. It was never easy, and the rage crept ever further in as they were forced back into the Chantry, the Herald shuffling inside with everyone who had been left outside. Minaeve was a wailing mess and the Herald had an awkward hand on her shoulder, as close to comforting as she could probably be.

It was odd, the way everything slowed down in the Chantry with the entirety of Haven crammed in and afraid. This was _it_ , the end that felt like it had been a long time coming. The desire for control over it was wrapped around his ribcage, gave him the air to suggest burying themselves so as not to give those _monsters_ the satisfaction.

The Herald objected first, then the rest present echoed her dissatisfaction with the end as the best plan. The only thing that stopped it from devolving into a screaming match was the boy, Cole, who had softly knocked at the gates to Haven, covered in blood. He was supporting the dying chancellor, a man who perhaps in his last moments wanted to do something worthy of getting him to the Maker’s side.

And the path he suggested, a bright piece of hope that perhaps tonight they would all go to sleep and live to see the morning, they needed a _cover_. Cullen almost offered himself up for it, he should be the one to bury Samson, before Clara declared that she was doing it. Her words rang with finality and she turned the moment she said it, halfway to pulling the Chantry doors open before he’d even had a chance to process what she was going to do.

He reached out for her arm, pulse pounding in his head as he tried to think of something to _say_. Everything was happening all at once and the stink of decay and lyrium was hanging heavily in the air as thick smoke seeped into the Chantry. In that split second as his eyes met hers, it smacked him that this was _it_. The past five months had been dreadfully short.

“Don’t be reckless,” he said quietly and he could feel his hands start shaking as he held onto the leather of her coat, the protests of the fabric lost to the roar in the hall. _I want to see you come back._

She stared at him for a second before her face twisted with certainty, yanking herself out of his grip. “Don’t be stupid,” she shot back. For a moment, Cullen thought he might have seen something that looked like emotion in her eyes, but she turned, out of the Chantry and then she was _gone_. Figured those would be her last words to him.

Outside he heard the dragon scream, the building shaking from it. As dust from the ceiling settled on all of them, everyone shifted into herding what was left of Haven into packing what they could carry and then into the pass out the back of the Chantry. Roderick was at the front by the Commander, carried by him and Cole. The wind outside bit, and only when they were almost entirely through the pass did the tunnels collapse behind them, the dragon screaming and the mountains shaking as they crushed Haven.

The party settled in the bowl behind the mountain was built into, a clearing filled with snow that was only shin deep and not waist. All through crawling out of the mountain, Cullen’s head had felt like it was pricking all over, and not just from the cold. It left his guts feeling sick and heavy, worried and stubborn as he called Cassandra over and said that he was forming a search for the Herald.

Surprisingly, she didn’t try to stop him. He didn’t have to give her the reasoning he’d built in his head, didn’t have to say that he _couldn’t_ believe she was dead until he’d seen her body, didn’t have to say that _she_ of all people couldn’t have possibly frozen death, not yet, not already.

As they started the search, a blizzard picked up and Cullen remembered the color of the Inquisitor’s armor. Entirely white, he prayed she didn’t lose her scarf, the red piece the only slash of color on her. The only thing worse than finding her dead would’ve been to pass over her entirely because they couldn’t see her in the fresh ice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright it's finally, like _done_. It's been a wild ride, and now that this is finally done I'm free to start my post-trespasser things.
> 
> So, as always, my tumblr is [jellopunch](http://jellopunch.tumblr.com/) and tell me how you felt!


End file.
